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JAMES K.MOFFITT
PAULINE FORE MOFFITT
LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
GENERAL LIBRARY, BERKELEY
University of California Berkeley
i
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
PRINCIPLES of GEOLOG-Y ; or, the MODERN CHANGES of
the EAETH and its INHABITANTS, as illustrative of Geology. 9th Edition.
Woodcuts, 8vo., 18s.
ELEMENTS of GEOLOGY ; or, the ANCIENT CHANGES of
the EABTH and its INHABITANTS, as illustrated by its Geological Monuments.
6th Edition, revised. Woodcuts. 8vo. \In preparation.
A FIRST and SECOND VISIT to NORTH AMERICA,
CANADA, NOVA SCOTIA, &c. : with GEOLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS. 2nd
Edition. Maps. 4 vols. Post 8vo. 24.
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THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCES
OF
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN
WITH KEMABKS ON THEORIES OF
THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY VARIATION
BY Sffi CHAELES LYELL, F.E.S.
AUTHOR OF 'PRINCIPLES OP GEOLOGY,' 'ELEMENTS OF GEOLOGY,' ETC. ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY WOODCUTS
LONDON
JOHN MUEEAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1863
The right or translation is reserved
LONDON
PBINTEU BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO.
NEW-STKEET SQUABB
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION.
Preliminary Remarks on the Subjects treated of in this "Work Definition of
the Terms Recent, Post-Pliocene, and Post-Tertiary Tabular View of the
entire Series of Fossiliferous Strata ,-/.<* . . . PAGE 1
CHAPTER II.
RECENT PERIOD DANISH PEAT AND SHELL MOUNDS SWISS LAKE
DWELLINGS.
Works of Art in Danish Peat-Mosses Remains of three Periods of Vegetation
in the Peat Ages of Stone, Bronze, and Iron Shell-Mounds or ancient
Refuse-Heaps of the Danish Islands Change in geographical Distribution
of Marine Mollusca since their Origin Embedded Remains of Mammalia
of recent Species Human Skulls of the same Period Swiss LaEe-Dwel-
lings built on Piles Stone and Bronze Implements found in them Fossil
Cereals and other Plants Remains of Mammalia, wild and domesticated
No extinct Species Chronological Computations of the Date of the Bronze
and Stone Periods in Switzerland Lake-Dwellings, or artificial Islands
called ' Crannoges,' in Ireland ./->.. . ' v '. 8
CHAPTER III.
FOSSIL HUMAN REMAINS AND WORKS OF ART OF THE RECENT PERIOD.
Delta and Alluvial Plain of the Nile Burnt Bricks in Egypt before the Roman
Era Borings in 1851-54 Ancient Mounds of the Valley of the Ohio
Their Antiquity Sepulchral Mound at Santos in Brazil Delta of the
Mississippi Ancient Human Remains in Coral Reefs of Florida Changes in
Physical Geography in the Human Period Buried Canoes in marine Strata
near Glasgow Upheaval since the Roman Occupation of the Shores of the
Firth of Forth Fossil Whales near Stirling Upraised marine Strata of
Sweden on Shores of the Baltic and the Ocean Attempts to compute their
Age. v 33
yi CONTEXTS.
CHAPTER IV.
POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD
BONES OF MAN AND EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN BELGIAN CAVERNS.
Earliest Discoveries in Caves of Languedoc of Human Remains with Bones of
extinct Mammalia Researches in 1833 of Dr. Schmerling in the Liege
Caverns Scattered Portions of Human Skeletons associated with Bones of
Elephant and Rhinoceros Distribution and probable Mode of Introduction
of the Bones Implements of Flint and Bone Schmerling' s Conclusions as
to the Antiquity of Man ignored Present State of the Belgian Caves
Human Bones recently found in Cave of Engihoul Engulfed Rivers
Stalagmitic Crust Antiquity of the Human Remains in Belgium how
proved PAGE 59
CHAPTER V.
POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD
FOSSIL HUMAN SKULLS OF THE NEANDERTHAL AND ENGIS CAVES.
Human Skeleton found in Cave near Diisseldorf Its geological Position and
probable Age Its abnormal and ape-like Characters Fossil Human Skull
of the Engis Cave near Liege Professor Huxley's Description of these
Skulls Comparison of each, with extreme Varieties of the native Austra
lian Race Range of Capacity in the Human and Simian Brains Skull from
Borrebyin Denmark Conclusions of Professor Huxley Bearing of the
peculiar Characters of the Neanderthal Skull on the Hypothesis of Transmu
tation 75
CHAPTER VI.
POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM AND CAVE DEPOSITS WITH FLINT
IMPLEMENTS.
General Position of Drift with extinct Mammalia in Valleys Discoveries of
M. Boucher de Perthes- at Abbeville Flint Implements found also at
St. Acheul, near Amiens Curiosity awakened by the systematic Explora
tion of the Brixham Cave Flint Knives in same, with Bones of extinct
Mammalia Superposition of Deposits in the Cave Visits of English and
French Geologists to Abbeville and Amiens . . . . 93
CHAPTER VII.
PEAT AND POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME.
Geological Structure of the Valley of the Somme and of the surrounding
Country Position of Alluvium of different Ages Peat near Abbeville
Its animal and vegetable Contents Works of Art in Peat Probable
Antiquity of the Peat, and Changes of Level since its Growth began Flint
Implements of antique Type in older Alluvium Their various Forms and
great Numbers i . 106
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS OF THE VALLEY
OF THE SOMME concluded.
Fluvio-marine Strata, with Flint Implements, near Abbeville Marine Shells in
same Cyrena Fluminalis Mammalia Entire Skeleton of Rhinoceros
Flint Implements, why found low down in Fluviatile Deposits Rivers
shifting their Channels Relative Ages of higher and lower-level Gravels
Section of Alluvium of St. Acheul Two Species of Elephant and Hippopo
tamus coexisting with Man in France Volume of Drift, proving Antiquity
of Flint Implements Absence of Human Bones in tool-bearing Alluvium,
how explained Value of certain Kinds of negative Evidence tested thereby
Human Bones not found in drained Lake of Haarlem . . PAGE 121
CHAPTER IK
WORKS OF ART IN POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF FEANCE AND
ENGLAND.
Flint Implements in ancient Alluvium of the Basin of the Seine Bones of Man
and of extinct Mammalia in the Cave of Arcy Extinct Mammalia in the
Valley of the Oise Flint Implement in Gravel of same Valley Works of
Art in Post-Pliocene Drift in Valley of the Thames Musk Buffalo Meeting
of northern and southern Fauna Migrations of Quadrupeds Mammals of
Amoor Land Chronological Relation of the older Alluvium of the Thames
to the Glacial Drift Flint Implements of Post-Pliocene Period in Surrey,
Middlesex, Kent, Bedfordshire, and Suffolk. . ', ' . 150
CHAPTER X.
CAVERN DEPOSITS, AND PLACE OF SEPULTURE OF THE POST-PLIOCENE
PERIOD.
Flint Implements in Cave containing Hysena and other extinct Mammalia in
Somersetshire Caves of the Gower Peninsula in South Wales Rhinoceros
hemitoechus Ossiferous Caves near Palermo Sicily once part of Africa
Rise of Bed of the Mediterranean to the Height of three hundred Feet in the
Human Period in Sardinia Burial Place of Post-Pliocene Date of Aurignac
in the South of France Rhinoceros tichorhinus eaten by Man M. Lartet
on extinct Mammalia and Works of Art found in the Aurignac Cave
Relative Antiquity of the same, considered 170
Vlll CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XI.
AGE OF HUMAN FOSSILS OF LE PUT IN CENTRAL FRANCE AND OF
NATCHEZ ON THE MISSISSIPPI, DISCUSSED.
Question as to the Authenticity of the Fossil Man of Denise, near Le Puy-en-
Velay, considered Antiquity of the Human Race implied by that Fossil
Successive Periods of volcanic Action in Central France "With what
Changes in the Mammalian Fauna they correspond The Elephas Meridio-
nalis anterior in Time to the implement-bearing Gravel of St. Acheul
Authenticity of the Human Fossil of Natchez on the Mississippi, discussed
The Natchez Deposit, containing Bones of Mastodon and Megalonyx, pro
bably not older than the Flint Implements of St. Acheul . . PAGE 194
CHAPTER XII.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN RELATIVELY TO THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND TO THE
EXISTING FAUNA AND FLORA.
Chronological Relation of the Glacial Period, and the earliest known Signs of
Man's Appearance in Europe Series of Tertiary Deposits in Norfolk and
Suffolk immediately antecedent to the Glacial Period Gradual Refrigeration
of Climate proved by the Marine Shells of successive Groups Marine
Newer Pliocene Shells of northern Character, near Woodbridge Section of
tbe Norfolk Cliffs Norwich Crag Forest Bed and fluvio-marine Strata
Fossil Plants and Mammalia of the same Overlying Boulder Clay and
contorted Drift Newer freshwater Formation of Mundesley compared to
that of Hoxne Great Oscillations of Level implied by the Series of Strata
in the Norfolk Cliffs Earliest known Date of Man long subsequent to the
existing Fauna and Flora 206
CHAPTER XIII.
CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND THE EARLIEST
SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE.
Chronological Relations of the Close of the Glacial Period and the earliest
geological Signs of the Appearance of Man Effects of Glaciers and Icebergs
in polishing and scoring Rocks Scandinavia once encrusted with Ice like
Greenland Outward Movement of Continental Ice in Greenland Mild
Climate of Greenland in the Miocene Period Erratics of recent Period in
Sweden Glacial State of Sweden in the Post-Pliocene Period Scotland
formerly encrusted with Ice Its subsequent Submergence and Re-elevation
Latest Changes produced by Glaciers in Scotland Remains of the Mammoth
and Reindeer in Scotch Boulder Clay Parallel Roads of Glen Roy formed
in Glacier Lakes Comparatively modern Date of these Shelves . 229
CONTENTS. IX
CHAPTEE XIV.
CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND THE EARLIEST
SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE continued.
Signs of extinct Glaciers in Wales Great Submergence of Wales during the
Glacial Period proved by Marine Shells Still greater Depression inferred
from stratified Drift Scarcity of organic Eemains in Glacial Formations
Signs of extinct . Glaciers in England Ice Action in Ireland Maps
illustrating successive Eevolutions in Physical Geography during the Post-
Pliocene Period Southernmost Extent of Erratics in England Successive
Periods of Junction and Separation of England, Ireland, and the Continent
Time required for these Changes Probable Causes of the Upheaval and
Subsidence of the Earth's Crust Antiquity of Man considered in relation
to the Age of the existing Fauna and Flora .... PAGE 265
CHAPTEE XV.
EXTINCT GLACIERS OF THE ALPS AND THEIR CHRONOLOGICAL RELATION
TO THE HUMAN PERIOD.
Extinct Glaciers of Switzerland Alpine Erratic Blocks on the Jura Not
transported by floating Ice Extinct Glaciers of the Italian Side of
the Alps Theory of the Origin of Lake-Basins by the erosive Action of
Glaciers, considered Successive Phases in the Development of Glacial
Action in the Alps Probable Eelation of these to the earliest known Date
of Man Correspondence of the same with successive Changes in the Glacial
Condition of the Scandinavian and British Mountains Cold Period in
Sicily and Syria . .-_ . : . . , ,- . 4 V. ... 290
CHAPTEE XVI.
HUMAN REMAINS IN THE LOESS, AND THEIR PROBABLE AGE.
Nature, Origin, and Age of the Loess of the Ehine and Danube Impalpable
Mud produced by the grinding Action of Glaciers Dispersion of this Mud
at the Period of the Eetreat of the great Alpine Glaciers Continuity of
the Loess from Switzerland to the Low Countries Characteristic organic
Eemains not Lacustrine Alpine Gravel in the Valley of the Ehine covered
by Loess Geographical Distribution of the Loess and its Height above the
Sea Fossil Mammalia Loess of the Danube Oscillations in the Level
of the Alps and lower Country required to explain the Formation and
Denudation of the Loess More rapid Movement of the inland Country
The same Depression and Upheaval might account for the Advance and
Eetreat of the Alpine Glaciers Himalayan Mud of the Plains of the
Ganges compared to European Loess Human Eemains in Loess near
Maestricht, and their probable Antiquity 324
X CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XVII.
POST-GLACIAL DISLOCATIONS AND FOLDINGS OF CRETACEOUS AND DRIFT
STRATA IN THE ISLAND OF MOEN, IN DENMARK.
Geological Structure of the Island of Moen Great Disturbances of the
Chalk posterior in Date to the Glacial Drift, with recent Shells M. Pug-
gaard's Sections of the Cliffs of Moen Flexures and Faults common to the
Chalk and Glacial Drift Different Direction of the Lines of successive
Movement, Fracture, and Flexure Undisturbed Condition of the Eocks in
the adjoining Danish Islands Unequal Movements of Upheaval in Finmark
Earthquake of New Zealand in 1855 Predominance in all Ages of
uniform Continental Movements over those by which the Eocks are
locally convulsed . . . <" * .;' . - ' PAGE 341
CHAPTEE XVIII.
THE GLACIAL PERIOD IN NORTH AMERICA.
Post-glacial Strata containing Eemains of Mastodon Giganteus in North
America Scarcity of Marine Shells in Glacial Drift of Canada and the
United States Greater southern Extension of Ice- action in North America
than in Europe Trains of Erratic Blocks of vast Size in Berkshire, Massa
chusetts Description of their Linear Arrangement and Points of Departure
Their Transportation referred to Floating and Coast Ice General
Remarks on the Causes of former Changes of Climate at successive geological
Epochs Supposed Effects of the Diversion of the Gulf Stream in a
Northerly instead of North-Easterly Direction Development of extreme
Cold on the opposite Sides of the Atlantic in the Glacial Period not strictly
simultaneous Number of Species of Plants and Animals common to Pre-
glacial and Post-glacial Times 351
CHAPTEE XIX.
RECAPITULATION OF GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY.
Recapitulation of Eesults arrived at in the earlier Chapters Ages of Stone
and Bronze Danish Peat and Kitchen-Middens Swiss Lake-Dwellings
Local Changes in Vegetation and in the wild and domesticated Animals and
in Physical Geography coeval with the Age of Bronze and the later Stone
Period Estimates of the positive Date of some Deposits of the later Stone
Period Ancient Division of the Age of Stone of St. Acheul and Aurignac
Migrations of Man in that Period from the Continent to England in Post-
Glacial Times Slow Rate of Progress in barbarous Ages Doctrine of the
superior Intelligence and Endowments of the original Stock of Mankind
considered Opinions of the Greeks and Eomans, and their Coincidence
with those of the modern Progressionist Early Egyptian Civilisation and
its Date in comparison with that .of the First and Second Stone Periods
CONTENTS. XI
CHAPTER XX.
THEORIES OF PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION.
Antiquity and Persistency in Character of the existing Races of Mankind
Theory of their Unity of Origin considered Bearing of the Diversity of
Races on the Doctrine of Transmutation Difficulty of defining the Terms
'Species' and 'Race' Lamarck's Introduction of the Element of Time into
the Definition of a Species His Theory of Variation and Progression
Objections to his Theory, how far answered Arguments of modern Writers
in favour of Progression in the Animal and Vegetable World The old
Landmarks supposed to indicate the first Appearance of Man, and of dif
ferent Classes of Animals, found to be erroneous Yet the Theory of an
advancing Series of organic Beings not inconsistent with Facts Earliest
known Fossil Mammalia of low Grade No Vertebrata as yet discovered in
the oldest fossiliferous Rocks Objections to the Theory of Progression
considered Causes of the Popularity of the Doctrine of Progression as
compared to that of Transmutation PAGE 385
CHAPTER XXI.
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY VARIATION AND NATURAL SELECTION.
Mr. Darwin's Theory of the Origin of Species by Natural Selection Memoir
by Mr. Wallace Manner in which favoured Races prevail in the Struggle
for Existence Formation of new Races by breeding Hypothesis of
definite and indefinite Modifiability equally arbitrary Competition and
Extinction of Races Progression not a necessary Accompaniment of
Variation Distinct Classes of Phenomena which natural Selection explains
Unity of Type, rudimentary Organs, Geographical Distribution, Relation
of the extinct to the living Fauna and Flora, and mutual Relations of suc
cessive Groups of Fossil Forms Light thrown on Embryological Develop
ment by natural Selection Why large Genera have more variable Species
than small ones Dr. Hooker on the Evidence afforded by the Vegetable
Kingdom in favour of Creation by Variation Sefstrom on alternate Gene
ration How far the Doctrine of independent Creation is opposed to the
Laws now governing the Migration of Species 407
CHAPTER. XXII.
OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION CONSIDERED.
Statement of Objections to the Hypothesis of Transmutation founded on the
Absence of intermediate Forms Genera of which the Species are closely
allied Occasional Discovery of the missing Links in a Fossil State
Davidson's Monograph on the Brachiopoda Why the Gradational Forms,
when found, are not accepted as Evidence of Transmutation Gaps caused
by Extinction of Races and Species Vast Tertiary Periods during which
this Extinction has been going on in the Fauna and Flora now existing
Xli CONTENTS.
Genealogical Bond between Miocene and recent Plants and Insects Fossils
of Oeninghen Species of Insects in Britain and North America represented
by distinct Varieties Falconer's Monograph on living and fossil Elephants
Fossil Species and Genera of the Horse Tribe in North and South America
Eelation of the Pliocene Mammalia of North America, Asia, and Europe
Species of Mammalia, though less persistent than the Mollusca, change
slowly Arguments for and against Transmutation derived from the Absence
of Mammalia in Islands Imperfection of the Geological Eecord Inter
calation of newly discovered Formations of intermediate Age in the chronolo
gical Series Eeference of the St. Cassian Beds to the Triassic Period
Discovery of new organic Types Feathered Archseopteryx of the Oolite
PAGE 424
CHAPTEE XXIII.
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGES AND SPECIES COMPARED.
Aryan Hypothesis and Controversy The Eaces of Mankind change more
slowly than their Languages Theory of the gradual Origin of Languages
Difficulty of defining what is meant by a Language as distinct from a
Dialect Great Number of extinct and living Tongues No European
Language a Thousand Years old Gaps between Languages, how caused
Imperfection of the Eecord Changes always in Progress Struggle for
Existence between Eival Terms and Dialects Causes of Selection Each
Language formed slowly in a single geographical Area May die out
gradually or suddenly Once lost can never be revived Mode of Origin
of Languages and Species a Mystery Speculations as to the Number of
original Languages or Species unprofitable 454
CHAPTEE XXIV.
BEARING OF THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMUTATION ON THE ORIGIN OF
MAN, AND HIS PLACE IN THE CREATION.
Whether Man can be regarded as an Exception to the Eule if the Doctrine of
Transmutation be embraced for the rest of the Animal Kingdom Zoological
Eelations of Man to other Mammalia Systems of Classification Term
Quadrumanous, why deceptive Whether the Structure of the Human Brain
entitles Man to form a distinct Sub-class of the Mammalia Eecent Con
troversy as to the Degree of Eesemblance between the Brain of Man and
that of the Apes Intelligence of the lower Animals compared to the
Intellect and Eeason of Man Grounds on which Man has been referred
to a distinct Kingdom of Nature Immaterial Principle common to Man
and Animals Non-discovery of intermediate Links among Fossil Anthropo
morphous Species Hallam on the compound Nature of Man, and his Place
in the Creation Dr. Asa Gray on Gradations in Nature, and on the bearing
of the Doctrine of Natural Selection on Natural Theology . , . 471
GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE
OF
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN,
CHAPTEE I.
INTRODUCTOKY.
PRELIMINARY REMARKS ON THE SUBJECTS TREATED OF IN THIS WORK
DEFINITION OF THE TERMS RECENT, POST-PLIOCENE, AND POST-TER
TIARY TABULAR VIEW OF THE ENTIRE SERIES OF FOSS1LLFEROUS
STRATA.
NO subject has lately excited more curiosity and general
interest among geologists and the public than the
question of the Antiquity of the Human Eace, whether or
no we have sufficient evidence in caves, or in the superficial
deposits commonly called drift or ' diluvium,' to prove the
former co-existence of man with certain extinct mammalia.
For the last half-century, the occasional occurrence, in va
rious parts of Europe, of the bones of man or the works of
his hands, in cave-breccias and stalactites, associated with the
remains of the extinct hyaena, bear, elephant, or rhinoceros,
has given rise to a suspicion that the date of man must be
carried further back than we had heretofore imagined. On
the other hand, extreme reluctance was naturally felt, on the
part of scientific reasoners, to admit the validity of such
2 PRELIMINARY -REMARKS. CHAP. I.
evidence, seeing that so many caves have been inhabited
by a succession of tenants, and have been selected by man,
as a place not only of domicile, but of sepulture, while some
caves have also served as the channels through which the
waters of occasional land-floods or engulfed rivers have
flowed, so that the remains of living beings which have
peopled the district at more than one era may have subse
quently been mingled in such caverns and confounded
together in one and the same deposit. But the facts brought
to light in 1858, during the systematic investigation of the
Brixham cave, near Torquay in Devonshire, which will be
described in the sequel, excited anew the curiosity of the
British public, and prepared the way for a general admission
that scepticism in regard to the bearing of cave evidence in
favour of the antiquity of man had previously been pushed
to an extreme.
Since that period, many of the facts formerly adduced in
favour of the co-existence in ancient times of man with
certain species of mammalia long since extinct have been
re-examined in England and on the Continent, and new cases
bearing on the same question, whether relating to caves or
to alluvial strata in valleys, have been brought to light. To
qualify myself for the appreciation and discussion of these
cases, I have visited, in the course of the last three years,
many parts of England, France, and Belgium, and have
communicated personally or by letter with not a few of the
geologists, English and foreign, who have taken part in these
researches. Besides explaining in the present volume the
results of this enquiry, I shall give a description of the
glacial formations of Europe and North America, that I may
allude to the theories entertained respecting their origin, and
consider their probable relations in a chronological point of
view to the human epoch, and why throughout' a great part
of the northern hemisphere they so often interpose an abrupt
CHAP. I, SUBJECTS TREATED OF IN THIS WORK. 3
barrier to all attempts to trace farther back into the past the
signs of the existence of man upon the earth.
In the concluding chapters I shall offer a few remarks on
the, recent modifications of the Lamarckian theory of pro
gressive development and transmutation, which are sug
gested by Mr. Darwin's work on the ' Origin of Species, by
Variation and Natural Selection,' and the bearing of this
hypothesis on the different races of mankind and their con
nection with other parts of the animal kingdom.
Nomenclature. Some preliminary explanation of the
nomenclature adopted in the following pages will be indis
pensable, that the meaning attached to the terms Recent,
Post-pliocene, and Post-tertiary may be correctly understood.
Previously to the year 1833, when I published the third
volume of the f Principles of Geology,' the strata called
Tertiary had been divided by geologists into Lower, Middle,
and Upper ; the Lower comprising the oldest formations of the
environs of Paris and London, with others of like age ; the
Middle, those of Bordeaux and Touraine ; and the Upper, all
that lay above or were newer than the last-mentioned, group.
When engaged, in 1828, in preparing for the press the
treatise on geology above alluded to, I conceived the idea of
classing the whole of this series of strata according to the
different degrees of affinity which their fossil testacea bore to
the living fauna. Having obtained information on this
subject during my travels on the Continent, I learnt that
M.Deshayes of Paris, already celebrated as a conchologist, had
been led independently, by the study of a large collection of
recent and fossil shells, to very similar views respecting the
possibility of arranging the tertiary formations in chrono
logical order, according to the proportional number of species
of shells identical with living ones, which characterised each
of the successive groups above mentioned. After comparing
3000 fossil species with 5000 living ones, the result arrived at
B 2
4 DEFINITION OF THE TERMS CHAP. I.
was, that in the lower tertiary strata, there were about 3|-
per cent, identical with recent ; in the middle tertiary (the
faluns of the Loire and Gironde), about 17 per cent. ; and in
the upper tertiary, from 35 to 50, and sometimes in the most
modern beds as much as 90 to 95 per cent. For the sake of
clearness and brevity, I proposed to give short technical names
to these sets of strata, or the periods to which they respec
tively belonged. I called the first or oldest of them Eocene,
the second Miocene, and the third Pliocene. The first of
the above terms, Eocene, is derived from r)cu$ eos 9 dawn, and
xottvos kainos, recent; because an extremely small propor
tion of the fossil shells of this period could be referred to
living species, so that this era seemed to indicate the dawn of
the present testaceous fauna, no living species of shells having
been detected in the antecedent or secondary rocks.
Some conchologists are now unwilling to allow that any
Eocene species of shell has really survived to our times so
unaltered as to allow of its specific identification with a living
species. I cannot enter in this place into this wide controversy.
It is enough at present to remark, that the character of the
Eocene fauna, as contrasted with that of the antecedent
secondary formations, wears a very modern aspect, and that
some able living conchologists still maintain that there are
Eocene shells not specifically distinguishable from those now
extant; though they may be fewer in number than was
supposed in 1833.
The term Miocene (from peicov melon, less; and xaivo'f
kainos 9 recent) is intended to express a minor proportion of
recent species (of testacea) ; the term Pliocene (from 7r\slwv
pleion, more ; and xaTvoj kainos, recent), a comparative
plurality of the same.
It has sometimes been objected to this nomenclature that
certain species of infusoria found in the chalk are still
existing, and, on the other hand, the Miocene and Older
CHAP. I. RECENT, POST-PLIOCENE, AND POST-TERTIARY. 5
Pliocene deposits often contain the remains of mammalia,
reptiles, and fish, exclusively of extinct species. But the
reader must bear in mind that the terms Eocene, Miocene,
and Pliocene were originally invented with reference purely
to conchological data, and in that sense have always been and
are still used by me.
Since the first introduction of the terms above defined, the
number of new living species of shells obtained from different
parts of the globe has been exceedingly great, supplying fresh
data for comparison, and enabling the paleontologist to
correct many erroneous identifications of fossil and recent
forms. New species also have been collected in abundance
from tertiary formations of every age, while newly discovered
groups of strata have filled up gaps in the previously known
series. Hence modifications and reforms have been called
for in the classification first proposed. The Eocene, Miocene,
and Pliocene periods have been made to comprehend certain
sets of strata of which the fossils do not always conform
strictly in the proportion of recent to extinct species with the
definitions first given by me, or which are implied in the
etymology of those terms. These innovations have been
treated of in my ( Elements or Manual of Elementary
Greology,' and in the Supplement to the fifth edition of the
same, published in 1859, where some modifications of my
classification, as first proposed, are introduced ; but I need
not dwell on these on the present occasion, as the only
formations with which we shall be concerned in the pre
sent volume are those of the most modern date, or the
Post-tertiary. It will be convenient to divide these into two
groups, the Eecent and the Post-pliocene. In the Eecent we
may comprehend those deposits in which not only all the
shells but all the fossil mammalia are of living species ; in the
Post-pliocene those strata in which, the shells being recent,
a portion, and often a considerable one, of the accompanying
6 DEFINITION OF TERMS. CHAP. I.
fossil quadrupeds belongs to extinct species. I am aware that
it may be objected, with some justice, to this nomenclature,
that the term Post-pliocene ought in strictness to include all
geological monuments posterior in date to the Pliocene;
but when I have occasion to speak of these in the aggregate,
I shall call them Post-tertiary, and reserve the term Post-
pliocene exclusively for Lower Post-pliocene, the Upper Post-
pliocene formations being called 6 Eecent.'
Cases will occur where it may be scarcely possible to draw
the line of demarcation between the Newer Pliocene and Post-
pliocene, or between the latter and the recent deposits ; and
we must expect these difficulties to increase rather than
diminish with every advance in our knowledge, and in propor
tion as gaps are filled up in the series of geological records.
In 1839 I proposed the term Pleistocene as an abbreviation
for Newer Pliocene, and it soon became popular, because
adopted by the late Edward Forbes in his admirable essay
on 'The Geological Kelations of the existing Fauna and
Flora of the British Isles;'* but he applied the term almost
precisely in the sense in which I shall use Post-pliocene in this
volume, and not as short for Newer Pliocene. In order to
prevent confusion, I think it best entirely to abstain from
the use of Pleistocene in future ; I have found that the
introduction of such a fourth name (unless restricted solely to
the older Post-tertiary formations) must render the use of
Pliocene, in its original extended sense, impossible, and it is
often almost indispensable to have a single term to compre
hend both divisions of the Pliocene period.
The annexed tabular view of the whole series of fossiliferous
strata will enable the reader to see at a glance the chrono
logical relation of the Eecent and Post-pliocene to the ante
cedent periods.
* Geological Kelations of the Survey of Great Britain, vol. i. p. 336.
existing Fauna and Flora of the London, 1846.)
British Isles. (Memoirs of Geological
CHAP. I.
TABULAR VIEW OF FOSSILIFEROUS STRATA.
ABRIDGED GENERAL TABLE OF FOSSILIFEROUS STEATA.
1. RECENT.
2. POST-PLIOCENE.
3. NEWER PLIOCENE.
4. OLDER PLIOCENE.
5. UPPER MIOCENE.
6. LOWER MIOCENE.
7. UPPER EOCENE.
8. MIDDLE EOCENE.
9. LOWER EOCENE.
10. MAESTRICHT BEDS.
11. UPPER WHITE CHALK.
12. LOWER WHITE CHALK.
13. UPPER GREENSAND.
J4. GAULT.
15. LOWER GREENSAND.
16. WEALDEN.
17. PURBECK BEDS.
18. PORTLAND STONE.
19. KIMMERIDGE CLAY.
20. CORAL RAG.
21. OXFORD CLAY.
22. GREAT or BATH OOLITE.
23. INFERIOR OOLITE.
24. LIAS
25. UPPER TRIAS.
26. MIDDLE TRIAS, or
MUSCHELKALK.
POST-TERTIARY.
PLIOCENE.
MIOCENE.
EOCENE.
CRETACEOUS.
JURASSIC.
TRIASSIC.
y
fc oO
O CQ
CO
27. LOWER TRIAS.
)
28. PERMIAN,
or
MAGNESIAN LIMESTONE
PERMIAN.
29. COAL-MEASURES.
u
30. CARBONIFEROUS
LIMESTONE.
CARBONIFEROUS.
d O
* 1
<H N N
31. UPPER ^
I DEVONIAN.
32. LOWER]
DEVONIAN.
a I s
33. UPPER )
* 2 <i
\ SILURIAN.
34. LOWER)
SILURIAN.
P-I
35. UPPER 1
^CAMBRIAN,
ic T m\TT?a
CAMBRIAN*
.
WORKS OF ART IN DANISH PEAT-MOSSES. CHAP. u.
CHAPTEK II.
RECENT PERIOD DANISH PEAT AND SHELL MOUNDS SWISS
LAKE DWELLINGS.
WORKS OF ART IN DANISH PEAT-MOSSES REMAINS OF THREE PERIODS
OF VEGETATION IN THE PEAT AGES OF STONE, BRONZE, AND IRON
SHELL-MOUNDS OR ANCIENT REFUSE-HEAPS OF THE DANISH ISLANDS
CHANGE IN GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MARINE MOLLUSCA SINCE
THEIR ORIGIN EMBEDDED REMAINS OF MAMMALIA OF RECENT SPECIES
HUMAN SKULLS OF THE SAME PERIOD SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS
BUILT ON PILES STONE AND BRONZE IMPLEMENTS FOUND IN THEM
FOSSIL CEREALS AND OTHER PLANTS REMAINS OF MAMMALIA, WILD
AND DOMESTICATED NO EXTINCT SPECIES CHRONOLOGICAL COM
PUTATIONS OF THE DATE OF THE BRONZE AND STONE PERIODS IN
SWITZERLAND LAKE-DWELLINGS, OR ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS CALLED
'CRANNOGES,' IN IRELAND.
Works of Art in Danish Peat.
WHEN treating in the ( Principles of Geology ' of the
changes of the earth which have taken place in compa
ratively modern times, I have spoken (chap, xlv.) of the em
bedding of organic bodies and human remains in peat, and
explained under what conditions the growth of that vegetable
substance is going on in northern and humid climates. Of
late years, since I first alluded to the subject, more extensive
investigations have been made into the history of the Danish
peat-mosses. Of the results of these enquiries I shall give a
brief abstract in the present chapter, that we may afterwards
compare them with deposits of older date, which throw
light on the antiquity of the human race.
The deposits of peat in Denmark,* varying in depth from
* An excellent account of these re- and will be found in the Bulletin de
searches of Danish naturalists and la Societ6 Vaudoise des Sci. Nat., t. vi.
antiquaries has been drawn up by an Lausanne, 1860.
able Swiss geologist, M. A. Morlot,
CHAP. ii. WORKS OP ART IN DANISH PEAT-MOSSES. 9
ten to thirty feet, have been formed in hollows or depres
sions in the northern drift or boulder formation hereafter to
be described. The lowest stratum, two to three feet thick,
consists of swamp-peat composed chiefly of moss or sphagnum,
above which lies another growth of peat, not made up
exclusively of aquatic or swamp plants. Around the borders
of the bogs, and at various depths in them, lie trunks of trees,
especially of the Scotch fir (Pinus sylvestris), often three
feet in diameter, which must have grown on the margin of
the peat-mosses, and have frequently fallen into them.
This tree is not now, nor has ever been in historical times, a
native of the Danish Islands, and when introduced there has
not thriven ; yet it was evidently indigenous in the human
period, for Steenstrup has taken out witji his own hands a
flint instrument from below a buried trunk of one of these
pines. It appears clear that the same Scotch fir was after
wards supplanted by the sessile variety of the common oak,
of which many prostrate trunks occur in the peat at higher
levels than the pines ; and still higher the pedunculated
variety of the same oak (Quercus Robur L.) occurs with the
alder, birch (Betula verrucosa Ehrh.), and hazel. The oak
has now in its turn been almost superseded in Denmark by the
common beech. Other trees, such as the white birch (Betula
alba), characterise the lower part of the bogs, and disappear
from the higher ; while others again, like the aspen (Populus
tremula), occur at all levels, and still flourish in Denmark.
All the land and fresh-water shells, and all the mammalia as
well as the plants, whose remains occur buried in the
Danish peat, are of recent species.
It has been stated, that a stone implement was found
under a buried Scotch fir at a great depth in the peat. By
collecting and studying a vast variety of such implements,
and other articles of human workmanship preserved in peat
and in sand-dunes on the coast, as also in certain shell-
mounds of the aborigines presently to be described, the
10 AGES OF STONE, BRONZE, AND IRON. CHAP. II.
Danish and Swedish antiquaries and naturalists, MM. Nillson,
Steenstrup, Forchhammer, Thomsen, Worsaae and others,
have succeeded in establishing a chronological succession of
periods, which they have called the ages of stone, of bronze,
and of iron, named from the materials which have each in
their turn served for the fabrication of implements.
The age of stone in Denmark coincided with the period
of the first vegetation, or that of the Scotch fir, and in part
at least with the second vegetation, or that of the oak. But
a considerable portion of the oak epoch coincided with ' the
age of bronze,' for swords and shields of that metal, now
in the Museum of Copenhagen, have been taken out of peat
in which oaks abound. The age of iron corresponded more
nearly with that of the beech tree.*
M. Morlot, to whom we are indebted for a masterly sketch
of the recent progress of this new line of research, followed
up with so much success in Scandinavia and Switzerland,
observes that the introduction of the first tools made of bronze
among a people previously ignorant of the use of metals, im
plies a great advance in the arts, for bronze is an alloy of
about nine parts of copper and one of tin ; and although the
former metal, copper, is by no means rare, and is occasionally
found pure or in a native state, tin is not only scarce but
never occurs native. To detect the existence of this metal in
its ore, then to disengage it from the matrix, and finally,
after blending it in due proportion with copper, to cast the
fused mixture in a mould, allowing time for it to acquire
hardness by slow cooling, all this bespeaks no small sagacity
and skilful manipulation. Accordingly, the pottery found
associated with weapons of bronze is of a more ornamental
and tasteful style than any which belongs to the age of
stone. Some of the moulds in which the bronze instruments
were cast, and ( tags,' as they are called, of bronze, which are
* Morlot, Bulletin de la Societe Vaudoise des Sci. Nat., t. vi. p. 292.
CHAP. II. DANISH SHELL-MOUNDS. 11
formed in the hole through which the fused metal was poured,
have been found. The number and variety of objects belong
ing to the age of bronze indicates its long duration, as does
the progress in the arts implied by the rudeness of the earlier
tools, often mere repetitions of those of the stone age, as
contrasted with the more skilfully worked weapons of a later
stage of the same period.
It has been suggested that an age of copper must always
have intervened between that of stone and bronze ; but if so,
the interval seems to have been short in Europe, owing
apparently to the territory occupied by the aboriginal in
habitants having been invaded and conquered by a people
coming from the East, to whom the use of swords, spears, and
other weapons of bronze was familiar. Hatchets, however, of
copper have been found in the Danish peat.
The next stage of improvement, or that manifested by the
substitution of iron for bronze, indicates another stride in the
progress of the arts. Iron never presents itself, except in
meteorites, in a native state, so that to recognise its ores, and
then to separate the metal from its matrix, demands no small
exercise of the powers of observation and invention. To fuse
the ore requires an intense heat, not to be obtained without
artificial appliances, such as pipes inflated by the human
breath, or bellows, or some other suitable machinery.
Danish Shell-mounds, or Kjokkenmodding.*
In addition to the peat-mosses, another class of memorials
found in Denmark has thrown light on the pre-historical age.
At certain points along the shores of nearly all the Danish
* Mr. John Lubbock published, p. 489, in which he has described the
after these sheets were written, an results of a recent visit to Denmark,
able paper on the Danish ' shell- made by him in company with Messrs,
mounds ' in the October Number of Busk, Prestwich, and Galton.
the Natural History Keview, 1861,
12 DANISH SHELL -MOUNDS, . CHAP. n.
islands, mounds may be seen, consisting chiefly of thousands
of cast-away shells of the oyster, cockle, and other mollusks
of the same species as those which are now eaten by man.
These shells are plentifully mixed up with the bones of
various quadrupeds, birds and fish, which served as the food
of the rude hunters and fishers by whom the mounds were
accumulated. I have seen similar large heaps of oysters,
and other marine shells, with interspersed stone implements,
near the sea-shore, both in Massachusetts and in Georgia,
U. S,, left by the native North American Indians at points
near to which they were in the habit of pitching their wig
wams for centuries before the white man arrived.
Such accumulations are called by the Danes, Kjokken-
modding, or 'kitchen-refuse-heaps.' Scattered all through
them are flint knives, hatchets, and other instruments of
stone, horn, wood, and bone, with fragments of coarse pottery,
mixed with charcoal and cinders, but never any implements
of bronze, still less of iron. The stone hatchets and knives
had been sharpened by rubbing, and in this respect are one
degree less rude than those of an older date, associated in
France with the bones of extinct mammalia, of which more
in the sequel. The mounds vary in height from 3 to 10 feet,
and in area are some of them 1000 feet long, and from 150
to 200 wide. They are rarely placed more than 10 feet
above the level of the sea, and are confined to its immediate
neighbourhood, or if not (and there are cases where they are
several miles from the shore), the distance is ascribable to the
entrance of a small stream, which has deposited sediment, or
to the growth of a peaty swamp, by which the land has been
made to advance on the Baltic, as it is still doing in many
places, aided, according to M. Puggaard, by a very slow up
heaval of the whole country at the rate of two or three inches
in a century.
There is also another geographical fact equally in favour
CHAP. II. OR 'KITCHEN-MIDDENS.' 13
of the antiquity of the mounds, viz., that they are wanting
on those parts of the coast which border the Western Ocean,
or exactly where the waves are now slowly eating away the
land. There is every reason to presume that originally there
were stations along the coast of the Grerman Ocean as well
as that of the Baltic, but by the gradual undermining of
the cliffs they have all been swept away.
Another striking proof, perhaps the most conclusive of
all, that the ' refuse-heaps ' are very old, is derived from
the character of their embedded shells. These consist en
tirely of living species ; but, in the first place, the common
eatable oyster is among them, attaining its full size, whereas
the same Ostrea edulis cannot live at present in the brackish
waters of the Baltic except near its entrance, where, when
ever a north-westerly gale prevails, a current setting in from
the ocean pours in a great body of salt water. Yet it seems
that during the whole time of the accumulation of the
'shell-mounds' the oyster flourished in places from which
it is now excluded. In like manner the eatable cockle,
mussel, and periwinkle (Cardium edule, Mytilus edulis,
and Littorina littored), which are met with in great
numbers in the ( refuse-heaps,' are of the ordinary dimen
sions which they acquire in the ocean, whereas the same
species now living in the adjoining parts of the Baltic
only attain a third of their natural size, being stunted and
dwarfed in their growth by the quantity of fresh water
poured by rivers into that inland sea.* Hence we may con
fidently infer that in the days of the aboriginal hunters and
fishers, the ocean had freer access than now to the Baltic,
communicating probably through the peninsula of Jutland,
Jutland having been at no remote period an archipelago.
Even in the course of the present century, the salt waters
* See Principles of Geology, ch. xxx.
14 DANISH SHELL-MOUNDS, CHAP. II.
have made one eruption into the Baltic by the Lymfiord,
although they have been now again excluded. It is also
affirmed that other channels were open in historical times
which are now silted up.*
If we next turn to the remains of vertebrata preserved in
the mounds, we find that here also, as in the Danish peat
mosses, all the quadrupeds belong to species known to have
inhabited Europe within the memory of man. No remains
of the mammoth, or rhinoceros, or of any extinct species
appear, except those of the wild bull (Bos Urus Linn., or Bos
primigenius Bojanus), which are in such numbers as to
prove that the species was a favourite food of the ancient
people. But as this animal was seen by Julius Caesar, and
survived long after his time, its presence alone would not
go far to prove the mounds to be of high antiquity. The
Lithuanian aurochs or bison (Bos Bison L., Bos priscus Boj.,
which has escaped extirpation only because protected by the
Kussian Czars, surviving in one forest in Lithuania) has not
yet been met with, but will no doubt be detected hereafter,
as it has been already found in the Danish peat. The
beaver, long since destroyed in Denmark, occurs frequently,
as does the seal (Phoca Gryppus Fab.), now very rare on
the Danish coast. With these are mingled bones of the red
deer and roe, but the rein-deer has not yet been found.
There are also the bones of many carnivora, such as the
lynx, fox, and wolf, but no signs of any domesticated animals
except the dog. The long bones of the larger mammalia
have been all broken as if by some instrument, in such a
manner as to allow of the extraction of the marrow, and the
gristly parts have been gnawed off, as if by dogs, to whose
agency is also attributed the almost entire absence of the
bones of young birds and of the smaller bones and softer
* See Morlot, Bulletin de la Socie"te Vaudoise des Sci. Nat. t. vi.
CHAP. II. OR ' KITCHEN-MIDDENS.' 15
parts of the skeletons of birds in general, even of those of
large size. In reference to the latter, it has been proved ex
perimentally by Professor Steenstrup, that if the same species
of birds are now given to dogs, they will devour those parts
of the skeleton which are missing, and leave just those which
are preserved in the old e refuse-heaps.'
The dogs of the mounds, the only domesticated animals,
are of a smaller race than those of the bronze period, as
shown by the peat-mosses, and the dogs of the bronze age
are inferior in size and strength to those of the iron age.
The domestic ox, horse, and sheep, which are wanting in the
mounds, are confined to that part of the Danish peat which
grew in the ages of bronze and iron.
Among the bones of birds, scarcely any are more frequent
in the mounds than those of the auk or penguin (Alca
impennis\ now extinct in Europe, having but lately died
out in Iceland, but said still to survive in Greenland, where,
however, its numbers are fast diminishing. The Capercailzie
(Tetrao Urogallus) is also met with, and may, it is suggested,
have fed on the buds of the Scotch fir in times when that
tree flourished around the peat-bogs. The different stages of
growth of the roe-deer's horns, and the presence of the wild
swan, now only a winter visitor, have been appealed to as
proving that the aborigines resided in the same settlements
all the year round. That they also ventured out to sea in
canoes such as are now found in the peat-mosses, hollowed
out of the trunk of a single tree, to catch fish far from land,
is testified by the bony relics of several deep-sea species, such
as the herring, cod, and flounder. The ancient people were
not cannibals, for no human bones are mingled with the spoils
of the chase. Skulls, however, have been obtained not only
from peat, but from tumuli of the stone period believed to be
contemporaneous with the mounds. These skulls are small
and round, and have a prominent ridge over the orbits of
16 SUCCESSION OF TREES IN DANISH PEAT. CHAP. n.
the eyes, showing that the ancient race was of small stature,
with round heads and overhanging eyebrows, in short, they
bore a considerable resemblance to the modern Laplanders.
The human skulls of the bronze age found in the Danish peat,
and those of the iron period, are of an elongated form and
larger size. There appear to be very few well-authenti
cated examples of crania referable to the bronze period, a
circumstance no doubt attributable to the custom prevalent
among the people of that era of burning their dead and
collecting their bones in funeral urns.
No traces of grain of any sort have hitherto been discovered,
nor any other indication that the ancient people had any
knowledge of agriculture. The only vegetable remains in the
mounds are burnt pieces of wood and some charred substance
referred by Dr. For ch hammer to the Zoster a marina, a sea
plant which was perhaps used in the production of salt.
What may be the antiquity of the earliest human remains
preserved in the Danish peat cannot be estimated in centuries
with any approach to accuracy. In the first place, in going
back to the bronze age, we already find ourselves beyond the
reach of history or even of tradition. In the time of the
Eomans the Danish Isles were covered, as now, with magnifi
cent beech forests. Nowhere in the world does this tree flou
rish more luxuriantly than in Denmark, and eighteen centuries
seem to have done little or nothing towards modifying the cha
racter of the forest vegetation. Yet in the antecedent bronze
period there were no beech trees, or at most but a few stragglers,
the country being then covered with oak. In the age of stone
again, the Scotch fir prevailed (see p. 9), and already there
were human inhabitants in those old pine forests. How many
generations of each species of tree flourished in succession
before the pine was supplanted by the oak, and the oak by
the beech, can be but vaguely conjectured, but the minimum
of time required for the formation of so much peat must, ac-
CHAP. II. ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. 17
cording to the estimate of Steenstrup and other good authori
ties, have amounted to at least 4000 years; and there is nothing
in the observed rate of the growth of peat opposed to the
conclusion that the number of centuries may not have been four
times as great, even though the signs of man's existence have
not yet been traced down to the lowest or amorphous stratum.
As to the ' shell-mounds,' they correspond in date to the
older portion of the peaty record, or to the earliest part of the
age of stone as known in Denmark.
Ancient Swiss Lake-dwellings, built on Piles.
In the shallow parts of many Swiss lakes, where there is
a depth of no more than from five to fifteen feet of water,
ancient wooden piles are observed at the bottom sometimes
worn down to the surface of the mud, sometimes projecting
slightly above it. These have evidently once supported
villages, nearly all of them of unknown date, but the most
ancient of which certainly belonged to the age of stone, for
hundreds of implements resembling those of the Danish
shell-mounds and peat-mosses have been dredged up from
the mud into which the piles were driven.
The earliest historical account of such habitations is that
given by Herodotus of a Thracian tribe, who dwelt, in the
year 520 B.C., in Prasias, a small mountain-lake of Pseonia,
now part of Modern Eoumelia.*
Their habitations were constructed on platforms raised
above the lake, and resting on piles. They were connected
with the shore by a narrow causeway of similar formation.
Such platforms must have been of considerable extent, for
the Pseonians lived there with their families and horses.
Their food consisted largely of the fish which the lake
produced in abundance.
* Herodotus, lib. v. cap. 16. Kediscovered by M. Deville, Nat. Hist. Eer.,
Oct. 1862, vol. ii. p. 486.
C
18 ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. CHAP. u.
In rude and unsettled times, such insular sites afforded
safe retreats, all communication with the main land being cut
off, except by boats, or by such wooden bridges as could be
easily removed.
The Swiss lake-dwellings seem first to have attracted
attention during the dry winter of 1853-4, when the lakes
and rivers sank lower than had ever been previously known,
and when the inhabitants of Meilen, on the Lake of Zurich,
resolved to raise the level of some ground and turn it into
land, by throwing mud upon it obtained by dredging in the
adjoining shallow water. During these dredging operations
they discovered a number of wooden piles deeply driven into
the bed of the lake, and among them a great many hammers,
axes, celts, and other instruments. All these belonged to the
stone period with two exceptions, namely, an armlet of thin
brass wire, and a small bronze hatchet.
Fragments of rude pottery fashioned by the hand were
abundant, also masses of charred wood, supposed to have
formed parts of the platform on which the wooden cabins
were built. Of this burnt timber, on this and other sites,
subsequently explored, there was such an abundance as to
lead to the conclusion that most of the settlements must
have perished by fire. Herodotus has recorded that the
Paeonians, above alluded to, preserved their independence
during the Persian invasion, and defied the attacks of Xerxes
by aid of the peculiar position of their dwellings. ' But their
safety,' observes Mr. Wylie, * ' was probably owing to their
living in the middle of the lake, lv p*s<ry ry A/^VJJ, whereas the
ancient Swiss settlers were compelled by the rapidly increas
ing depth of the water near the margins of their lakes to
construct their habitations at a short distance from the shore,
within easy bowshot of the land, and therefore not out of
* "W. M. "Wylie, M.A., Archaeology, vol. xxxvii., 1859, a valuable paper on the
Swiss and Irish lake-habitations.
CHAP. II. ANCIENT SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. 19
reach of fiery projectiles, against which thatched roofs and
wooden walls could present but a poor defence.' To these
circumstances we are probably indebted for the frequent
preservation, in the mud around the site of the old settle
ments, of the most precious tools and works of art, such as
would never have been thrown into the Danish f shell-
mounds,' which have been aptly compared to a modern dust-
hole.
Dr. Ferdinand Keller of Zurich has drawn up a series of
most instructive memoirs, illustrated with well-executed
plates, of the treasures in stone, bronze, and bone brought to
light in these subaqueous repositories, and^has given an ideal
restoration of part of one of the old villages (see plate 1) ,*
such as he conceives may have existed on the Lakes of Zurich
and Bienne. In this view, however, he has not simply trusted
to his imagination, but has availed himself of a sketch pub
lished by M. Dumont d'Urville, of similar habitations of the
Papoos in New Guinea in the Bay of Dorei. It is also stated
by Dr. Keller, that on the Eiver Limmat, near Zurich, so late
as the last century, there were several fishing-huts constructed
on this same plan.f It will be remarked, that one of the
cabins is represented as circular. That such was the form of
many in Switzerland is inferred from the shape of pieces of
clay which lined the interior, and which owe their preserva
tion apparently to their having been hardened by fire when
the village was burnt. In the sketch, some fishing-nets are
seen spread out to dry on the wooden platform. The Swiss
archaeologist has found abundant evidence of fishing-gear,
consisting of pieces of cord, hooks, and stones used as weights.
A canoe also is introduced, such as are occasionally met with.
One of these, made of the trunk of a single tree, fifty feet long
* Keller, Pfahlbauten, Antiqua- 1862, Mr. Lubbock has published an
rische Gresellschaft in Zurich, Bd. xii. excellent account of the works of the
xiii. 1858-1861. In the fifth number of Swiss writers on their lake-habitations,
the Natural History Keview, January 9, f Keller, ibid. Bd. ix. p. 81, note.
c 2
20 STONE AND BRONZE IMPLEMENTS. CHAP. IT.
and three and a half feet wide, was found capsized at the
bottom of the Lake of Bienne. It appears to have been
laden with stones, such as were used to raise the foundation
of some of the artificial islands.
It is believed that as many as 300 wooden huts were
sometimes comprised in one settlement, and that they may
have contained about 1000 inhabitants. At Wangen, M.
Lohle has calculated that 40,000 piles were used, probably
not all planted at one time nor by one generation. Among
the works of great merit devoted specially to a description of
the Swiss lake-habitations is that of M. Troyon, published in
I860.* The number of sites which he and other authors
have already enumerated in Switzerland is truly wonderful.
They occur on the large lakes of Constance, Zurich, Geneva
and Neufchatel, and on most of the smaller ones. Some are
exclusively of the stone age, others of the bronze period. Of
these last more than twenty are spoken of on the Lake of
Geneva alone, twelve on that of Neufchatel, and ten on the
small Lake of Bienne.
One of the sites first studied by the Swiss antiquaries was
the small lake of Moosseedorf, near Berne, where imple
ments of stone, horn, and bone, but none of metal, were
obtained. Although the flint here employed must have come
from a distance (probably from the South of France), the
chippings of the material are in such profusion as to imply
that there was a manufactory of implements on the spot.
Here also, as in several other settlements, hatchets and
wedges of jade have been observed of a kind said not to
occur in Switzerland or the adjoining parts of Europe, and
which some mineralogists would fain derive from the
East; amber also, which, it is supposed, was imported from
the shores of the Baltic.
At Wangen near Stein, on the Lake of Constance, another
* Sur les Habitations lacustres,
CHAP. II. FOSSIL CEREALS AND OTHER PLANTS. 21
of the most ancient of the lake-dwellings, hatchets of serpen
tine and greenstone, and arrow-heads of quartz, have been
met with. Here also remains of a kind of cloth, supposed to
be of flax, not woven but plaited, have been detected. Pro
fessor Heer has recognised lumps of carbonized wheat, Triti-
cum vulgare, and grains of another kind, T. dicoccum, and
barley, Hordeum distichon, and flat round cakes of .bread,
showing clearly that in the stone period the lake-dwellers
cultivated all these cereals, besides having domesticated the
dog, the ox, the sheep, and the goat.
Carbonized apples and pears of small size, such as still
grow in the Swiss forests, stones of the wild plum, seeds of
the raspberry and blackberry, and beech-nuts, also occur in
the mud, and hazel-nuts in great plenty.
Near Morges, on the Lake of Geneva, a settlement of the
bronze period, no less than forty hatchets of that metal have
been dredged up, and in many other localities the number
and variety of weapons and utensils discovered, in a fine state
of preservation, is truly astonishing.
It is remarkable that as yet all the settlements of the
bronze period are confined to Western and Central Switzer
land. In the more eastern lakes those of the stone period
alone have as yet been discovered.
The tools, ornaments, and pottery of the bronze period in
Switzerland bear a close resemblance to those of correspond
ing age in Denmark, attesting the wide spread of a uniform
civilization over Central Europe at that era. In some few of
the aquatic stations, as well as in tumuli and battlefields
in Switzerland, a mixture of bronze and iron implements and
works of art have been observed, including coins and medals
of bronze and silver, struck at Marseilles, and of Greek
manufacture, belonging to the first and pre-Eoman division
of the age of iron.
In the settlements of the bronze era the wooden piles are
22 EEMAINS OF MAMMALIA, WILD AND DOMESTICATED, CHAP. IT.
not so much decayed as are those of the stone period ; the
latter having wasted down quite to the level of the mud,
whereas the piles of the bronze age (as in the Lake of Bienne,
for example) still project above it.
Professor Kiitimeyer of Basle, well known to paleontologists
as the author of several important memoirs on fossil verte-
brata,. has recently published a scientific description of
great interest of the animal remains dredged up at various
stations where they had been embedded for ages in the mud
into which the piles were driven.*
These bones bear the same relation to the primitive
inhabitants of Switzerland and some of their immediate
successors as do the contents of the Danish ' refuse-heaps ' to
the ancient fishing and hunting tribes who lived on the
shores of the Baltic.
The list of wild mammalia enumerated in this excellent
treatise contains no less than twenty-four species, exclusive of
several domesticated ones : besides which there are eighteen
species of birds, the wild swan, goose, and two species of ducks
being among them ; also three reptiles, including the eatable
frog and fresh- water tortoise ; and lastly, nine species of fresh
water fish. All these (amounting to fifty-four species) are
with one exception still living in Europe. The exception
is the wild bull (Bos primigenius), which, as before stated,
survived in historical times. The following are the mammalia
alluded to : The bear ( Ursus Arctos), the badger, the com
mon marten, the polecat, the ermine, the weasel, the otter,
wolf, fox, wild cat, hedgehog, squirrel, field-mouse (Mus syl-
vaticus), hare, beaver, hog (comprising two races, namely, the
wild boar and swamp-hog), the stag (Cervus Elephas), the
roe-deer, the fallow-deer, the elk, the steinbock (Capra Ibex),
the chamois, the Lithuanian bison, and the wild bull. The
* Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz. Basel, 1861.
CHAP. II. IN SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. 23
domesticated species comprise the dog, horse, ass, pig, goat,
sheep, and several bovine races.
The greater number, if not all, of these animals served for
food, and all the bones which contained marrow have been split
open in the same way as the corresponding ones found in the
shell-mounds of Denmark before mentioned. The bones both
of the wild bull and the bison are invariably split in this
manner. As a rule, the lower jaws with teeth occur in greater
abundance than any other parts of the skeleton, a circum
stance which, geologists know, holds good in regard to fossil
mammalia of all periods. As yet the reindeer is missing
in the Swiss lake-settlements as in the Danish ' refuse-heaps,'
although this animal in more ancient times ranged over
France, together with the mammoth, as far south as the Py
renees.
A careful comparison of the bones from different sites has
shown that in settlements such as Wangen and Moosseedorf,
belonging to the earliest age of stone, when the habits of the
hunter state predominated over those of the pastoral, venison,
or the flesh of the stag and roe, was more eaten than the flesh
of the domestic cattle and sheep. This was afterwards re
versed in the later stone period and in the age of bronze. At
that later period also the tame pig, which is wanting in some
of the oldest stations, had replaced the wild boar as a common
article of food. In the beginning of the age of stone, in Swit
zerland, the goats outnumbered the sheep, but towards the
close of the same period the sheep were more abundant than
the goats.
The fox in the first era was very common, but it nearly
disappears in the bronze age, during which period a large
hunting-dog, supposed to have been imported into Switzerland
from some foreign country, becomes the chief representative
of the canine genus.
A single fragment of the bone of a hare (Lepus timidus)
24 MAMMALIA IN SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. CHAP. n.
has been found at Moosseedorf. The almost universal absence
of this quadruped is supposed to imply that the Swiss lake-
dwellers were prevented from eating that animal by the same
superstition which now prevails among the Laplanders, and
which Julius Caesar found in full force amongst the ancient
Britons.*
That the lake-dwellers should have fed so largely on the
fox, while they abstained from touching the hare, establishes,
says Eiitimeyer, a singular contrast between their tastes and
ours.
Even in the earliest settlements, as already hinted, several
domesticated animals occur, namely, the ox, sheep, goat, and
dog. Of the three last, each was represented by one race
only ; but there were two races of cattle, the most common
being of small size, and called by Eiitimeyer Bos brachyceros
(Bos longifrons Owen), or the marsh cow, the other derived
from the wild bull ; though, as no skull has yet been disco
vered, this identification is not so certain as could be wished.
It is, however, beyond question that at a later era, namely, to
wards the close of the stone and beginning of the bronze period,
the lake-dwellers had succeeded in taming that formidable
brute the Bos primigenius, the Urus of Caesar, which he de
scribed as very fierce, swift, and strong, and scarcely inferior
to the elephant in size. In a tame state its bones were some
what less massive and heavy, and its horns were somewhat
smaller than in wild individuals. Still in its domesticated
form, it rivalled in dimensions the largest living cattle, those
of Friesland, in North Holland, for example. When most
abundant, as at Concise on the Lake of Neufchatel, it had
nearly superseded the smaller race, Bos brachyceros, and
was accompanied there for a short time by a third bovine
variety, called Bos trochoceros, an Italian race, supposed to
* Commentaries, lib. v. ch. 12.
CHAP. II. MAMMALIA IN SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. 25
have been imported from the southern side of the Alps.*
This last-mentioned race, however, seems only to have lasted
for a short time in Switzerland.
The wild bull (Bos primigenius') is supposed to have
flourished for a while both in a wild and tame state, just
as now in Europe the domestic pig co-exists with the wild
boar ; and Biitimeyer agrees with Cuvier and Bell,f in con
sidering our larger domestic cattle of northern Europe as
the descendants of this wild bull, an opinion which Owen
disputes. J
In the later division of the stone period, there were two
tame races of the pig, according to Kutimeyer ; one large,
and derived from the wild boar, the other smaller, called the
' marsh-hog,' or Sus Scrofa palustris. It may be asked how
the osteologist can distinguish the tame from wild races of the
same species by their skeletons alone. Among other cha
racters, the diminished thickness of the bones and the com
parative smallness of the ridges, which afford attachment to
the muscles, are relied on ; also the smaller dimensions of the
tusks in the boar, and of the whole jaw and skull ; and, in like
manner, the diminished size of the horns of the bull and other
modifications, which are the effects of a regular supply of food,
and the absence of all necessity of exerting their activity and
strength to obtain subsistence and defend themselves against
their enemies.
A middle-sized race of dogs continued unaltered through
out the whole of the stone period; but the people of the
bronze age possessed a larger hunting-dog, and with it a small
horse, of which genus very few traces have been detected
in the earlier settlements, a single tooth, for example, at
Wangen, and only one or two bones at two or three other places.
In passing from the oldest to the most modern sites, the
* Caesar's Commentaries, lib. v. ch. f British Quadrupeds, p. 415.
12, p. 161. j British Fossil Mammal, p. 500.
26 NO EXTINCT SPECIES OF MAMMAL. CHIP. n.
extirpation of the elk and beaver, and the gradual reduction
in numbers of the bear, stag, roe, and fresh-water tortoise are
distinctly perceptible. The aurochs, or Lithuanian bison, ap
pears to have died out in Switzerland about the time when
weapons of bronze came into use. It is only in a few of the
most modern lake-dwellings, such as Noville and Chavannes
in the Canton de Vaud (which the antiquaries refer to
the sixth century), that some traces are observable of the
domestic cat, as well as of a sheep with crooked horns, and
with them bones of the domestic fowl.
After the sixth century, no extinction of any wild quad
ruped nor introduction of any tame one appears to have taken
place, but the fauna was still modified by the wild species con
tinuing to diminish in number and the tame ones to become
more diversified by breeding and crossing, especially in the
case of the dog, horse, and sheep. On the whole, however,
the divergence of the domestic races from their aboriginal
wild types, as exemplified at Wangen and Moosseedorf, is con
fined, according to Professor Riitimeyer, within narrow limits.
As to the goat, it has remained nearly constant and true to
its pristine form, and the small race of goat-horned sheep
still lingers in some Alpine valleys in the Upper Rhine;
and in the same region a race of pigs, corresponding to the
domesticated variety ofSus Scrofapalustris, may still be seen.
Amidst all this profusion of animal remains extremely few
bones of man have been discovered ; and only one skull,
dredged up from Meilen, on the Lake of Zurich, of the early
stone period, seems as yet to have been carefully examined.
Respecting this specimen, Professor His observes that it ex
hibits, instead of the small and rounded form proper to the
Danish peat-mosses, a type much more like that now pre
vailing in Switzerland, which is intermediate between the
long-headed and short-headed form.*
* Riitimeyer, Die Fauna der Pfahlbauten in der Schweiz, p. 181.
CHAP. II. DATE OF BKONZE AND STONE PEEIODS. 27
So far, therefore, as we can draw safe conclusions from a
single specimen, there has been no marked change of race
in the human population of Switzerland during the periods
above considered.
It is still a question whether any of these subaqueous
repositories of ancient relics in Switzerland go back so far
in time as the shell-mounds of Denmark, for in these last
there are no domesticated animals except the dog, and no
signs of the cultivation of wheat or barley ; whereas we have
seen that, in one of the oldest of the Swiss settlements, at
Wangen, no less than three cereals make their appearance,
with four kinds of domestic animals. Yet there is no small
risk of error in speculating on the relative claims to an
tiquity of such ancient tribes, for some of them may have
remained isolated for ages and stationary in their habits,
while others advanced and improved.
We know that nations, both before and after the introduc
tion of metals, may continue in very different sta,ges of civi
lisation, even after commercial intercourse has been es
tablished between them, and where they are separated by
a less distance than that which divides the Alps from the
Baltic.
The attempts of the Swiss geologists and archeologists to es
timate definitely in years the antiquity of the bronze and stone
periods, although as yet confessedly imperfect, deserve notice,
and appear to me to be full of promise. The most elaborate
calculation is that made by M. Morlot, respecting the delta
of the Tiniere, a torrent which flows into the Lake of Geneva
near Villeneuve. This small delta, to which the stream is
annually making additions, is composed of gravel and sand.
Its shape is that of a flattened cone, and its internal structure
has of late been laid open to view in a railway cutting one
thousand feet long and thirty-two feet deep. The regularity
of its structure throughout implies that it has been formed
28 DATE OF BRONZE AND STONE PERIODS. CHAP. n.
very gradually, and by the uniform action of the same causes.
Three layers of vegetable soil, each of which must at one time
have formed the surface of the cone, have been cut through
at different depths. The first of these was traced over a sur
face of 15,000 square feet, having an average thickness of
five inches, and being about four feet below the present surface
of the cone. This upper layer belonged to the Roman period,
and contained Roman tiles and a coin. The second layer,
followed over a surface of 25,000 square feet, was six inches
thick, and lay at a depth of ten feet. In it were found
fragments of unvarnished pottery and a pair of tweezers in
bronze, indicating the bronze epoch. The third layer, fol
lowed for 35,000 square feet, was six or seven inches thick,
and nineteen feet deep. In it were fragments of rude pottery,
pieces of charcoal, broken bones, and a human skeleton having
a small, round, and very thick skull. M. Morlot, assuming
the Roman period to represent an antiquity of from sixteen
to eighteen centuries, assigns to the bronze age a date of
between 3000 and 4000 years, and to the oldest layer, that of
the stone period, an age of from 5000 to 7000 years.
Another calculation has been made by M. Troyon to obtain
the approximate date of the remains of an ancient settle
ment built on piles and preserved in a peat-bog at Chamblon,
near Yverdun, on the Lake of Neufchatel. The site of the
ancient Roman town of Eburodunum (Yverdon), once on the
borders of the lake, and between which and the shore there
now intervenes a zone of newly-gained dry land, 2500 feet in
breadth, shows the rate at which the bed of the lake has been
filled up with river sediment in fifteen centuries. Assuming
the lake to have retreated at the same rate before the Roman
period, the pile-works of Chamblon, which are of the bronze
period, must be at the least 3300 years old.
For the third calculation, communicated to me by M.
Morlot, we are indebted to M. Victor Grillieron, of Neuve-
CHAP. II. IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS, OR CRANNOGES. 29
ville, on the Lake of Bienne. It relates to the age of a pile-
dwelling, the mammalian bones of which are considered by
M. Kiitimeyer to indicate the earliest portion of the stone
period of Switzerland, and to correspond in age with the
settlement of Moosseedorf.
The piles in question occur at the Pont de Thiele, be
tween the Lakes of Bienne and Neufchatel. The old con
vent of St. Jean, founded 750 years ago, and built originally
on the margin of the Lake of Bienne, is now at a con
siderable distance from the shore, and affords a measure
of the rate of the gain of land in seven centuries and a half.
Assuming that a similar rate of the conversion of water
into marshy land prevailed antecedently, we should re
quire an addition of sixty centuries for the growth of the
morass intervening between the convent and the aquatic
dwelling of Pont de Thiele, in all 6750 years. M. Morlot,
after examining the ground, thinks it highly probable that
the shape of the bottom on which the morass rests is
uniform ; but this important point has not yet been tested by
boring. The result, if confirmed, would agree exceedingly
well with the chronological computation before mentioned of
the age of the stone period of Tiniere. As I have not myself
visited Switzerland since these chronological speculations
were first hazarded, I am unable to enter critically into a
discussion of the objections which have been raised to the
two first of them, or to decide on the merits of the explanations
offered in reply.
Irish Lake-dwellings, or Crannoges.
The lake-dwellings of the British Isles, although not ex
plored as yet with scientific zeal, as those of Switzerland have
been in the last ten years, are yet known to be very nu
merous, and when carefully examined will not fail to throw
great light on the history of the bronze and stone periods.
30 IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS, OR CRANNOGES. CHAP. II.
In the lakes of Ireland alone, no less than forty-six exam
ples of artificial islands, called crannoges, have been dis
covered. They occur in Leitrim, Roscommon, Cavan, Down,
Monaghan, Limerick, Meath, King's County, and Tyrone.*
One class of these f stockaded islands,' as they have been
sometimes called, was formed, according to Mr. Digby Wyatt,
by placing horizontal oak beams at the bottom of the lake,
into which oak posts, from six to eight feet high, were mor
tised, and held together by cross beams, till a circular en
closure was obtained.
A space of 520 feet diameter, thus inclosed at Lagore, was
divided into sundry timbered compartments, which were found
filled up with mud or earth, from which were taken 'vast
quantities of the bones of oxen, swine, deer, goats, sheep,
dogs, foxes, horses and asses.' All these were discovered be
neath sixteen feet of bog, and were used for manure; but
specimens of them are said to be preserved in the museum
of the Royal Irish Academy. From the same spot were ob
tained a great collection of antiquities, which, according to
Lord Talbot de Malahide and Mr. Wylie, were refefeble to
the ages of stone, bronze, and iron.|
In Ardekillin Lake, in Roscommon, an islet of an oval form
was observed, made of a layer of stones resting on logs of
timber. Round this artificial islet or crannoge thus formed,
was a stone wall raised on oak piles. A careful description
has been put on record by Captain Mudge, R. N., of a curious
log-cabin discovered by him in 1833 in Drumkellin bog, in
Donegal, at a depth of fourteen feet from the surface. It was
twelve feet square and nine feet high, being divided into two
stories each four feet high. The planking was of oak split
with wedges of stone, one of which was found in the building.
The roof was flat. A staked inclosure had been raised round
* Wylie, p. 8.
f Ibid., p. 8, who cites Archaeological Journal, voL vi. p. 101.
CHAP. II. IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS, OR CRANNOGES. 31
the cabin, and remains of other similar huts adjoining were
seen but not explored. A stone celt, found in the interior of
the hut, and a piece of leather sandal, also an arrow-head of
flint, and in the bog close at hand a wooden sword, give
evidence of the remote antiquity of this building, which may
be taken as a type of the early dwellings on the Crannoge
islands.
' The whole structure,' says Captain Mudge, ( was wrought
with the rudest kind of implements, and the labour bestowed
on it must have been immense. The wood of the mortises
was more bruised than cut, as if by a blunt stone chisel.' *
Such a chisel lay on the floor of the hut, and by comparing it
with the marks of the tool used in forming the mortises, they
were found ' to correspond exactly, even to the slight curved
exterior of the chisel ; but the logs had been hewn by
a larger instrument, in the shape of an axe. On the floor of
the dwelling lay a slab of freestone, three feet long and four
teen inches thick, in the centre of which was a small pit three
quarters of an inch deep, which had been chiselled out. This
is presumed to have been used for holding nuts to be cracked
by means of one of the round shingle stones, also found there,
which had served as a hammer. Some entire hazel-nuts and
a great quantity of broken shells were strewed about the
floor.'
The foundations of the house were made of fine sand, such
as is found with shingle on the sea-shore about two miles
distant. Below the layer of sand the bog or peat was ascer
tained, on probing it with an instrument, to be at least fifteen
feet thick. Although the interior of the building when dis
covered was full of e bog ' or peaty matter, it seems when in
habited to have been surrounded by growing trees, some of
the trunks and roots of which are still preserved in their
* Mudge, Archseologia, vol. xxvi.
32 IRISH LAKE-DWELLINGS, OR CRANNOGES. CHAP. n.
natural position. The depth of overlying peat affords no safe
criterion for calculating the age of the cabin or village, for I
have shown in the ' Principles of Geology' (ch. xlvi.j, that both
in England and Ireland, within historical times, bogs have
burst and sent forth great volumes of black mud, which has
been known to creep over the country at a slow pace, flow
ing somewhat at the rate of ordinary lava-currents, and some
times overwhelming woods and cottages, and leaving a deposit
upon them of bog-earth fifteen feet thick.
None of these Irish lake-dwellings were built, like those
of Helvetia, on platforms supported by piles deeply driven
into the mud. f The Crannoge system of Ireland seems,'
says Mr. Wylie, 'well nigh without a parallel in Swiss
waters.'
CHAP. in. DELTA AND ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE NILE. 33
CHAPTER III.
FOSSIL HUMAN KEMAINS AND WORKS OF ART OF THE
RECENT PERIOD,
Continued.
DELTA AND ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE NILE BURNT BRICKS IN EGYPT
BEFORE THE ROMAN ERA BORINGS IN 1851-54 ANCIENT MOUNDS
OF THE VALLEY OF THE OHIO THEIR ANTIQUITY SEPULCHRAL
MOUND AT SANTOS IN BRAZIL DELTA OF THE MISSISSIPPI ANCIENT
HUMAN REMAINS IN CORAL REEFS OF FLORIDA CHANGES IN PHYSICAL
GEOGRAPHY IN THE HUMAN PERIOD BURIED CANOES IN MARINE
STRATA NEAR GLASGOW UPHEAVAL SINCE THE ROMAN OCCUPATION
OF THE SHORES OF THE FIRTH OF FORTH FOSSIL WHALES NEAR
STIRLING UPRAISED MARINE STRATA OF SWEDEN ON SHORES OF THE
BALTIC AND THE OCEAN ATTEMPTS TO COMPUTE THEIR AGE.
Delta and Alluvial Plain of the Nile.
SOME new facts of high interest illustrating the geology of
the alluvial land of Egypt were brought to light between
the years 1851 and 1854, in consequence of investigations
suggested to the Eoyal Society by Mr. Leonard Homer, and
which were partly carried out at the expense of the Society.
The practical part of the undertaking was entrusted by Mr.
Homer to an Armenian officer of engineers, Hekekyan Bey,
who had for many years pursued his scientific studies in
England, and was in every way highly qualified for the task.
It was soon found that to obtain the required information
respecting the nature, depth, and contents of the Nile mud
in various parts of the valley, a larger outlay was called for
than had been originally contemplated. This expense the
late viceroy, Abbas Pacha, munificently undertook to defray
34 DELTA AND ALLUVIAL PLAIN OF THE NILE. CHAP. in.
out of his treasury, and his successor, after his death, con
tinued the operations with the same princely liberality.
Several engineers and a body of sixty workmen were
employed under the superintendence of Hekekyan Bey, men
inured to the climate, and able to carry on the sinking of
shafts and borings during the hot months, after the waters
of the Nile had subsided, and in a season which would have
been fatal to Europeans.
The results of chief importance arising out of this enquiry
were obtained from two sets of shafts and borings sunk at
intervals in lines crossing the great valley from east to west.
One of these consisted of no less than fifty-one pits and
artesian perforations, made where the valley is sixteen miles
wide from side to side between the Arabian and Lybian
deserts, in the latitude of Heliopolis, about eight miles above
the apex of the delta. The other line of borings and pits,
twenty-seven in number, was in the parallel of Memphis,
where the valley is only five miles broad.
Everywhere in these sections the sediment passed through
was similar in composition to the ordinary Nile mud of the
present day, except near the margin of the valley, where thin
layers of quartzose sand, such as is sometimes blown from the
adjacent desert by violent winds, was observed to alternate
with the loam.
A remarkable absence of lamination and stratification was
observed almost universally in the sediment brought up from
all points except where the sandy layers above alluded to oc
curred, the mud agreeing closely in character with the ancient
loam of the Ehine, called loess. Mr. Horner attributes this
want of all indication of successive deposition to the ex
treme thinness of the film of matter which is thrown down
annually on the great alluvial plain during the season of in
undation. The tenuity of this layer must indeed be extreme,
if the French engineers are tolerably correct in their estimate
CHAP. III. DELTA AND ALLUYIAL PLAIN OP THE NILE. 35
of the amount of sediment formed in a century, which they
suppose not to exceed on the average five inches. When the
waters subside, this thin layer of new soil, exposed to a hot sun,
dries rapidly, and clouds of dust are raised by the winds. The
superficial deposit, moreover, is disturbed almost everywhere
by agricultural labours, and even were this not the case, the
action of worms, insects, and the roots of plants would suffice
to confound together the deposits of two successive years.
All the remains of organic bodies, such as land-shells, and
the bones of quadrupeds, found during the excavations be
longed to living species. Bones of the ox, hog, dog, dromedary,
and ass were not uncommon, but no vestiges of extinct mam
malia. No marine shells were anywhere detected ; but this
was to be expected, as the borings, though they sometimes
reached as low as the level of the Mediterranean, were never
carried down below it, a circumstance much to be regretted,
since where artesian perforations have been made in deltas,
as in those of the Po and Granges, to the depth of several
hundred feet below the sea level, it has been found, contrary
to expectation, that the deposits passed through were fluvia-
tile throughout, implying, probably, that a general subsidence
of those deltas and alluvial formations has taken place.
Whether there has been in like manner a sinking of the land in
Egypt, we have as yet no means of proving ; but Sir Gardner
Wilkinson infers it from the position in the delta on the shore
near Alexandria of the tombs commonly called Cleopatra's
Baths, which cannot, he says, have been originally built so as
to be exposed to the sea which now fills them, but must have
stood on land above the level of the Mediterranean. The same
author adduces, as additional signs of subsidence, some ruined
towns, now half under water, in the Lake Menzaleh, and
channels of ancient arms of the Nile submerged with their
banks beneath the waters of that same lagoon.
In some instances, the excavations made under the super-
D 2
36 BORINGS IN EGYPT IN 1851-1858. CHAP. in.
intendence of Hekekyan Bey were on a large scale for the
first sixteen or twenty-four feet, in which cases jars, vases,
pots, and a small human figure in burnt clay, a copper knife,
and other entire articles were dug up ; but when water soaking
through from the Nile was reached, the boring instrument used
was too small to allow of more than fragments of works of art
being brought up. Pieces of burnt brick and pottery were
extracted almost everywhere, and from all depths, even where
they sank sixty feet below the surface towards the central parts
of the valley. In none of these cases did they get to the bottom
of the alluvial soil. It has been objected, among other criti
cisms, that the Arabs can always find whatever their employers
desire to obtain. Even those who are too well acquainted with
the sagacity and energy of Hekekyan Bey to suspect him of
having been deceived, have suggested that the artificial objects
might have fallen into old wells which had been filled up.
This notion is inadmissible for many reasons. Of the ninety-
five shafts and borings, seventy or more were made far from
the sites of towns or villages ; and allowing that every field
may once have had its well, there would be but small chance
of the borings striking upon the site even of a email number
of them in seventy experiments.
Others have suggested that the Nile may have wandered
over the whole valley, undermining its banks on one side
and filling up old channels on the other. It has also been
asked whether the delta with the numerous shifting arms of
the river may not once have been at every point where
the auger pierced.* To all these objections there are two
obvious answers: First, in historical times the Nile has on
the whole been very stationary, and has not shifted its position
in the valley ; secondly, if the mud pierced through had been
thrown down by the river in ancient channels, it would have
* For a detailed account of these Philosophical Transactions for 1855-
sections, see Mr. Horner's paper in the 1858.
CHAP. m. BORINGS IN EGYPT IN 1851-1858. 37
been stratified, and would not have corresponded so closely
with inundation mud. We learn from Captain Newbold that
he observed in some excavations in the great plain alternations
of sand and clay, such as are seen in the modern banks of the
Nile ; but in the borings made by Hekekyan Bey, such strati
fication seems scarcely in any ease to have been detected.
The great aim of the criticisms above enumerated has been
to get rid of the supposed anomaly of finding burnt brick and
pottery at depths and places which would give them claim
to an antiquity far exceeding that of the Eoman domination
in Egypt. For until the time of the Eomans, it is said, no
clay was burnt into bricks in the valley of the Nile. But a
distinguished antiquary, Mr. S. Birch, assures me that this
notion is altogether erroneous, and that he has under his
charge in the British Museum, first, a small rectangular baked
brick, which came from a Theban tomb, which bears the
name of Thothmes, a superintendent of the granaries of the god
Amen Ea, the style of art, inscription, and name, showing that
it is as old as the 18th dynasty (about 1450 B.C.) ; secondly,
an arched brick, or one which with others made up an arch,
having an inscription, partly obliterated, but ending with the
words ' of the temple of Amen Ea.' This brick, decidedly
long anterior to the Eoman dominion, is referred conjec-
turally, by Mr. Birch, to the 19th dynasty, or 1300 B.C.
M. Grirard, of the French expedition to Egypt, supposed
the average rate of the increase of Nile mud on the plain
between Asouan and Cairo to be five English inches in a
century. This conclusion, according to Mr. Horner, is very
vague, and founded on insufficient data; the amount of
matter thrown down by the waters in different parts of the
plain varying so much, that to strike an average with any
approach to accuracy must be most difficult. Were we to
assume six inches in a century, the burnt brick met with at a
depth of sixty feet would be 12,000 years old.
38 BORINGS IN EGYPT IN 1851-1858. CHAP. m.
Another fragment of red brick was found by Linant Bey,
in a boring seventy-two feet deep, being two or three feet
below the level of the Mediterranean, in the parallel of
the apex of the delta, 200 metres distant from the river,
on the Libyan side of the Eosetta branch.* M. Eosiere,
in the great French work on Egypt, has estimated the
mean rate of deposit of sediment in the delta at two inches
and three lines in a century f ; were we to take two and a
half inches, a work of art seventy-two feet deep must have
been buried more than 30,000 years ago. But if the boring
of Linant Bey was made where an arm of the river had been
silted up at a time when the apex of the delta was somewhat
farther south, or more distant from the sea than now, the
brick in question might be comparatively very modern.
The experiments instituted by Mr. Homer, in the hope of
obtaining an accurate chronometric scale for testing the age
of a given thickness of Nile sediment, are not considered by
experienced Egyptologists to have been satisfactory. The
point sought to be determined was the exact amount of Nile
mud which had accumulated in 3000 or more years, since the
time when certain ancient monuments, such as the obelisk
at Heliopolis, or the statue of king Eamesses at Memphis,
are supposed by some antiquaries to have been erected.
Could we have obtained possession of such a measure,
the rate of deposition might be judged of, approximately
at least, whenever similar mud was observed in other
places, or below the foundations of those same monu
ments. But the ancient Egyptians are known to have been
in the habit of enclosing with embankments, the areas on
which they erected temples, statues, and obelisks, so as to
exclude the waters of the Nile ; and the point of time to be
ascertained, in every case where we find a monument buried
* Horner, Philosophical Transactions, 1858.
f Description de 1'Egypte (Histoire Naturelle, torn. ii. p. 494).
CHAP. III. ANCIENT MOUNDS OF VALLEY OF THE OHIO. 39
to a certain depth in mud, as at Memphis and Heliopolis, is
the era when the city fell into such decay that the ancient
embankments were neglected, and the river allowed to in
undate the site of the temple, obejisk, or statue.
Even if we knew the date of the abandonment of such
embankments, the enclosed areas would not afford a favour
able opportunity for ascertaining the average rate of deposit
in the alluvial plain ; for Herodotus tells us that in his time
those spots from which the Nile waters had been shut out
for centuries appeared sunk, and could be looked down into
from the surrounding grounds, which had been raised by the
gradual accumulation over them of sediment annually thrown
down. If the waters at length should break into such de
pressions, they must at first carry with them into the enclosure
much mud washed from the steep surrounding banks, so that
a greater quantity would be deposited in a few years than
perhaps in as many centuries on the great plain outside the
depressed area, where no such disturbing causes intervened.
Ancient Mounds of the Valley of the Ohio.
As I have already given several European examples of
monuments of pre-historic date belonging to the recent
period, I will now turn to the American continent. Before
the scientific investigation by Messrs. Squier and Davis of the
6 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley,'* no one
suspected that the plains of that river had been occupied, for
ages before the French and British colonists settled there, by
a nation of older date, and more advanced in the arts than
the Eed Indians whom the Europeans found there. There
are hundreds of large mounds in the basin of the Mississippi,
and especially in the valleys of the Ohio and its tributaries,
which have served, some of them for temples, others for out-
* Smithsonian Contributions, vol. i., 1847.
40 ANTIQUITY OF THE OHIO MOUNDS. CHAP. in.
look or defence, and others for sepulture. The unknown
people by whom they were constructed, judging by the form
of several skulls dug out of the burial-places, were of the
Mexican or Toltecan race. Some of the earthworks are on
so grand a scale as to embrace areas of fifty or a hundred
acres within a simple enclosure, and the solid contents of
one mound are estimated at twenty millions of cubic feet, so
that four of them would be more than equal in bulk to the
Great Pyramid of Egypt, which comprises seventy-five
millions. From several of these repositories pottery and
ornamental sculpture have been taken, and various ar
ticles in silver and copper, also stone weapons, some com
posed of hornstone unpolished, and much resembling in
shape some ancient flint implements found near Amiens and
other places in Europe, to be alluded to in the sequel.
It is clear that the Ohio mound-builders had commercial
intercourse with the natives of distant regions, for among
the buried articles some are made of native copper from
Lake Superior, and there are also found mica from the
Alleghanies, sea-shells from the Gulf of Mexico, and obsidian
from the Mexican mountains.
The extraordinary number of the mounds implies a long
period, during which a settled agricultural population had
made considerable progress in civilization, so as to require large
temples for their religious rites, and extensive fortifications to
protect them from their enemies. The mounds were almost all
confined to fertile valleys or alluvial plains, and some at least
are so ancient, that rivers have had time since their con
struction to encroach on the lower terraces which support
them, and again to recede for the distance of nearly a mile,
after having undermined and destroyed a part of the works.
When the first European settlers entered the valley of the
Ohio, they found the whole region covered with an uninter
rupted forest, and tenanted by the Eed Indian hunter, who
CHIP. ill. ANTIQUITY OF THE OHIO MOUNDS. 41
roamed over it without any fixed abode, or any traditionary
connection with his more civilized predecessors. The only
positive data as yet obtained for calculating the minimum of
time which must have elapsed since the mounds were aban
doned, has been derived from the age and nature of the
trees found growing on some of these earthworks. When I
visited Marietta in 1842, Dr. Hildreth took me to one of
the mounds, and showed me where he had seen a tree grow
ing on it, the trunk of which when cut down displayed eight
hundred rings of annual growth.* But the late General
Harrison,, President in 1841 of the United States, who was well
skilled in woodcraft, has remarked, in a memoir on this sub
ject, that several generations of trees must have lived and
died before the mounds could have been overspread with
that variety of species which they supported when the white
man first beheld them, for the number and kinds of trees
were precisely the same as those which distinguished the
surrounding forest. f We may be sure,' observed Harrison,
( that no trees were allowed to grow so long as the earthworks
were in use ; and when they were forsaken, the ground, like all
newly cleared land in Ohio, would for a time be monopolised
by one or two species of tree, such as the yellow locust and
the ft lack or white walnut. When the individuals which were
the first to get possession of the ground had died out one
after the other, they would in many cases, instead of being
replaced by the same species, be succeeded (by virtue of the
law which makes a rotation of crops profitable in agriculture)
by other kinds, till at last, after a great number of centuries
(several thousand years, perhaps), that remarkable diversity
of species characteristic of North America, and far exceeding
what is seen in European forests, would be established.'
* Lyell's Travels in North America, vol. ii. p. 29.
42 MOUNDS OF SANTOS IN BRAZIL. CHAP. m.
Mounds of Santos in Brazil.
I will next say a few words respecting certain human
bones embedded in a solid rock at Santos in Brazil, to which
I called attention in my Travels in America in 1842.* I then
imagined the deposit containing them to be of submarine
origin, an opinion which I have long ceased to entertain.
We learn from a memoir of Dr. Meigs, that the River Santos
nas undermined a large mound, fourteen feet in height, and
about three acres in area, covered with trees, near the town
of St. Paul, and has exposed to view many skeletons, all
inclined at angles between 20 and 25, and all placed in a
similar east and west position.f Seeing, in the Museum of
Philadelphia, fragments of the calcareous stone or tufa from
this spot, containing a human skull with teeth, and in the
same matrix, oysters with serpulse attached, I at first con
cluded that the whole deposit had been formed beneath the
waters of the sea, or at least, that it had been submerged after
its origin, and again upheaved; also, that there had been
time since its emergence for the growth on it of a forest of
large trees. But after reading again, with more care, the
original memoir of Dr. Meigs, I cannot doubt that the shells,
like those of eatable kinds, so often accumulated in the
mounds of the North American Indians not far from the
sea, may have been brought to the place and heaped up with
other materials at the time when the bodies were buried.
Subsequently, the whole artificial earthwork, with its shells
and skeletons, may have been bound together into a solid
stone by the infiltration of carbonate of lime, and the mound
may therefore be of no higher antiquity than some of those
above alluded to on the Ohio, which, as we have seen, have in
like manner been exposed in the course of ages to the
encroachments and undermining action of rivers.
* Vol. i. p. 200. f Meigs, Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., 1828, p. 285.
CHAP. III. DELTA OF THE MISSISSIPPI. 43
Delta of the Mississippi.
I have shown in my Travels in North America that the
deposits forming the delta and alluvial plain of the Missis
sippi consist of sedimentary matter, extending over an area of
30,000 square miles, and known in some parts to be several
hundred feet deep. Although we cannot estimate correctly
how many years it may have required for the river to bring
down from the upper country so large a quantity of earthy
matter the data for such a computation being as yet
incomplete we may still approximate to a minimum of the
time which such an operation must have taken, by ascertain
ing experimentally the annual discharge of water by the
Mississippi, and the mean annual amount of solid matter
contained in its waters. The lowest estimate of the time
required would lead us to assign a high antiquity, amounting
to many tens of thousands of years (probably more than
100,000) to the existing delta.
Whether all or how much of this formation may belong to
the recent period, as above denned, I cannot pretend to
decide, but in one part of the modern delta near New
Orleans, a large excavation has been made for gas-works,
where a succession of beds, almost wholly made up of
vegetable matter, has been passed through, such as we now
see forming in the cypress swamps of the neighbourhood,
where the deciduous cypress (Taxodium distichum), with its
strong and spreading roots, plays a conspicuous part. In this
excavation, at the depth of sixteen feet from the surface,
beneath four buried forests superimposed one upon the other,
the workmen are stated by Dr. B. Dowler to have found
some charcoal and a human skeleton, the cranium of which
is said to belong to the aboriginal type of the Eed Indian
race. As the discovery in question had not been made
when I saw the excavation in progress at the gas-works in
44 COKAL REEFS OF FLORIDA. CHAP. III.
1846, 1 cannot form an opinion as to the value of the chrono
logical calculations which have led Dr. Dowler to ascribe to
this skeleton an antiquity of 50,000 years. In several sec
tions, both natural in the banks of the Mississippi and its
numerous arms, and where artificial canals had been cut, I ob
served erect stumps of trees, with their roots attached, buried
in strata at different heights, one over the other. I also re
marked, that many cypresses which had been cut through,
exhibited many hundreds of rings of annual growth, and
it then struck me that nowhere in the world could the geo
logist enjoy a more favourable opportunity for estimating in
years the duration of certain portions of the recent epoch.*
Coral Reefs of Florida.
Professor Agassiz has described a low portion of the penin
sula of Florida as consisting of numerous reefs of coral, which
have grown in succession so as to give rise to a continual
annexation of land, gained gradually from the sea in a
southerly direction. This growth is still in full activity, and
assuming the rate of advance of the land to be one foot in a
century, the reefs being built up from a depth of seventy-five
feet, and that each reef has in its turn added ten miles to the
coast, Professor Agassiz calculates that it has taken 135,000
years to form the southern half of this peninsula. Yet the
whole is of post-tertiary origin, the fossil zoophytes and shells
being all of the same species as those now inhabiting the
neighbouring sea.f In a calcareous conglomerate forming
part of the above-mentioned series of reefs, and supposed by
Agassiz, in accordance with his mode of estimating the rate of
growth of those reefs, to be about 10,000 years old, some
* Dowler, cited by Dr. W. Usher, f Agassiz, in Nott and G-liddon,
in Nott and Gliddon's Types of Man- ibid. p. 352.
kind, p. 352.
CHAP. III. KECENT DEPOSITS OP SEAS AND LAKES. 45
fossil human remains were found by Count PourtaKs. They
consisted of jaws and teeth, with some bones of the foot.
Recent Deposits of Seas and Lakes.
I have shown, in the Principles of Greology, where the
recent changes of the earth illustrative of geology are de
scribed at length, that the deposits accumulated at the
bottom of lakes and seas within the last 4000 or 5000 years
can neither be insignificant in volume or extent. They lie
hidden, for the most part, from our sight; but we have
opportunities of examining them at certain points where
newly-gained land in the deltas of rivers has been cut through
during floods, or where coral reefs are growing rapidly, or
where the bed of a sea or lake has been heaved up by sub
terranean movements and laid dry.
As examples of such changes of level by which marine
deposits of the recent period have become accessible to human
observation, I have adduced the strata near Naples in which
the Temple of Serapis at Pozzuoli was entombed.* These
upraised strata, the highest of which are about twenty-five
feet above the level of the sea, form a terrace skirting the
eastern shore of the Bay of Baiae. They consist partly of
clay, partly of volcanic matter, and contain fragments of
sculpture, pottery, and the remains of buildings, together
with great numbers of shells, retaining in part their colour,
and of the same species as those now inhabiting the neigh
bouring sea. Their emergence can be proved to have taken
place since the beginning of the sixteenth century.
In the same work, as an example of a fresh-water deposit
of the recent period, I have described certain strata in
Cashmere, a country where violent earthquakes, attended by
* Principles of Geology, Index, ' Serapis.'
46 CHANGES IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. CHAP. in.
alterations in the level of the ground, are frequent, in which
fresh-water shells of species now inhabiting the lakes and
rivers of that region are embedded, together with the remains
of pottery, often at the depth of fifty feet, and in which a
splendid Hindoo temple has lately been discovered, and laid
open to view by the removal of the lacustrine silt which had
enveloped it for four or five centuries.
In the same treatise (ch. xxix.) it is stated, that the west
coast of South America, between the Andes and the Pacific,
is a great theatre of earthquake movements, and that per
manent upheavals of the land of several feet at a time have
been experienced since the discovery of America. In various
parts of the littoral region of Chili and Peru, strata have
been observed enclosing shells in abundance, all agreeing
specifically with those now swarming in the Pacific. In one
bed of this kind, in the island of San Lorenzo, near Lima,
Mr. Darwin found, at the altitude of eighty-five feet above the
sea, pieces of cotton-thread, plaited rush, and the head of a
stalk of Indian corn, the whole of which had evidently been
embedded with the shells. At the same height, on the neigh
bouring mainland, he found other signs corroborating the
opinion that the ancient bed of the sea had there also been
uplifted eighty-five feet since the region was first peopled by
the Peruvian race. But similar shelly masses are also met with
at much higher elevations, at innumerable points between
the Chilian and Peruvian Andes and the sea-coast, in which
no human remains have as yet been observed. The pre
servation for an indefinite period of such perishable sub
stances as thread is explained by the entire absence of rain
in Peru. The same articles, had they been enclosed in the
permeable sands of an European raised beach, or in any
country where rain falls even for a small part of the year,
would probably have disappeared entirely.
In the literature of the last century, we find frequent allu-
CHAP. III. UPHEAVAL OF CENTRAL DISTRICT OF SCOTLAND. 47
sion to the ' era of existing continents,' a period supposed to
have coincided in date with the first appearance of man upon
the earth, since which event it was imagined that the relative
level of the sea and land had remained stationary, no im
portant geographical changes having occurred, except some
slight additions to the deltas of rivers, or the loss of narrow
strips of land where the sea had encroached upon its shores.
But modern observations have tended continually to dispel
this delusion, and the geologist is now convinced that at no
given era of the past have the boundaries of land and sea, or
the height of the one and depth of the other, or the geogra
phical range of the species inhabiting them, whether of animals
or plants, become fixed and unchangeable. Of the extent to
which fluctuations have been going on since the globe had
already become the dwelling-place of man, some idea may be
formed from the examples which I shall give in this and the
next nine chapters.
Upheaval since the Human Period of the Central
District of Scotland.
It has long been a fact familiar to geologists, that, both on
the east and west coasts of the central part of Scotland, there
are lines of raised beaches, containing marine shells of the
same species as those now inhabiting the neighbouring sea.*
The two most marked of these littoral deposits occur at
heights of about forty and twenty-five feet above high-water
mark, that of forty feet being considered as the more ancient,
and owing its superior elevation to a longer continuance of
the upheaving movement. They are seen in some places to
rest on the boulder clay of the glacial period, which will be
described in future chapters.
* R. Chambers, ' Sea Margins ; ' Jordan Hill, Mem. Wern. Soc. vol.
1848, and papers by Mr. Smith of viii., and by Mr. C. Maclaren.
48 BURIED CANOES IN THE YALLEY OF THE CLYDE. CHAP. in.
In those districts where large rivers, such as the Clyde,
Forth, and Tay, enter the sea, the lower of the two deposits,
or that of twenty-five feet, expands into a terrace fringing
the estuaries, and varying in breadth from a few yards to
several miles. Of this nature are the flat lands which occur
along the margin of the Clyde at Glasgow, which consist of
finely laminated sand, silt, and clay. Mr. John Buchanan,
a zealous antiquary, writing in 1855, informs us, that in the
course of the eighty years preceding that date, no less than
seventeen canoes had been dug out of this estuarine silt, and
that he had personally inspected a large number of them
before they were exhumed. Five of them lay buried in silt
under the streets of Grlasgow, one in a vertical position with
the prow uppermost as if it had sunk in a storm. In the
inside of it were a number of marine shells. Twelve other
canoes were found about a hundred yards back from the
river, at the average depth of about nineteen feet from the
surface of the soil, or seven feet above high-water mark ; but
a few of them were only four or five feet deep, and conse
quently more than twenty feet above the sea-level. One was
sticking in the sand at an angle of 45, another had been
capsized, and lay bottom uppermost ; all the rest were in a
horizontal position, as if they had sunk in smooth water.*
Nearly all of these ancient boats were formed out of a single
oak-stem, hollowed out by blunt tools, probably stone axes,
aided by the action of fire ; a few were cut beautifully smooth,
evidently with metallic tools. Hence a gradation could be
traced from a pattern of extreme rudeness to one showing
no small mechanical ingenuity. Two of them were built of
planks, one of which, dug up on the property of Bankton
in 1853, was eighteen feet in length, and very elaborately
constructed. Its prow was not unlike the beak of an antique
* GK Buchanan, Brit. Ass. Eep. 1855, p. 80 ; also Glasgow, Past and Present,
1856.
CHAP. III. UPHEAVAL OF THE SHORES OF THE FIRTH OF FORTH. 49
galley ; its stern, formed of a triangular-shaped piece of oak,
fitted in exactly like those of our day. The planks were
fastened to the ribs, partly by singularly shaped oaken pins,
and partly by what must have been square nails of some
kind of metal ; these had entirely disappeared, but some of
the oaken pins remained. This boat had been upset, and
was lying keel uppermost, with the prow pointing straight up
the river. In one of the canoes, a beautifully polished celt
or axe of greenstone was found, in the bottom of another a
plug of cork, which, as Mr. Greikie remarks, " could only have
come from the latitudes of Spain, Southern France, or Italy." *
There can be no doubt that some of these buried vessels
are of far more ancient date, than others. Those most
roughly hewn, may be relics of the stone period ; those more
smoothly cut, of the bronze age ; and the regularly built boat
of Bankton may perhaps come within the age of iron. The
occurrence of all of them in one and the same upraised
marine formation by no means implies that they belong
to the same era, for in the beds of all great rivers and
estuaries, there are changes continually in progress brought
about by the deposition, removal, and redeposition of gravel,
sand, and fine sediment, and by the shifting of the channel
of the main currents from year to year, and from century to
century. All these it behoves the geologist and antiquary
to bear in mind, so as to be always on their guard, when
they are endeavouring to settle the relative date, whether of
objects of art or of organic remains embedded in any set
of alluvial strata. Some judicious observations on this head
occur in Mr. Greikie's memoir above cited, which are so much
in point that I shall give them in full, and in his own words.
( The relative position in the silt, from which the canoes
were exhumed, could help us little in any attempt to ascer-
* Geikie, G-eol. Quart. Jcnirn. vol. xviii., p. 224.
E
50 MK. GEIKIE ON UPHEAVAL OF CHAP. in.
tain their relative ages, unless they had been found vertically
above each other. The varying depths of an estuary, its
banks of silt and sand, the set of its currents, and the in
fluence of its tides in scouring out alluvium from some parts
of its bottom and redepositing it in others, are circumstances
which require to be taken into account in all such calculations.
Mere coincidence of depth from the present surface of the
ground, which is tolerably uniform in level, by no means
necessarily proves contemporaneous deposition. Nor would
such an inference follow even from the occurrence of the
remains in distant parts of the very same stratum. A canoe
might be capsized and sent to the bottom just beneath low-
water mark ; another might experience a similar fate on the
following day, but in the middle of the channel. Both
would become silted up on the floor of the estuary ; but as
that floor would be perhaps twenty feet deeper in the centre
than towards the margin of the river, the one canoe might
actually be twenty feet deeper in the alluvium than the other ;
and on the upheaval of the alluvial deposits, if we were to
argue merely from the depth at which the remains were
embedded, we should pronounce the canoe found at the one
locality to be immensely older than the other, seeing that the
fine mud of the estuary is deposited very slowly and that it
must therefore have taken a long period to form so great a
thickness as twenty feet. Again, the tides and currents of
the estuary, by changing their direction, might sweep away
a considerable mass of alluvium from the bottom, laying bare
a canoe that may have foundered many centuries before.
After the lapse of so long an interval, another vessel might go
to the bottom in the same locality, and be there covered up
with the older one, on the same general plane. These two
vessels, found in such a position, would naturally be classed
together as of the same age, and yet it is demonstrable that a
very loDg period may have elapsed between the date of the
CHAP. in. CENTEAL DISTEICT OF SCOTLAND. .',1
one and that of the other. Such an association of these
canoes, therefore, cannot be regarded as proving synchronous
deposition ; nor, on the other hand can we affirm any
difference of age from mere relative position, unless we see
one canoe actually buried beneath another.'*
At the time when the ancient vessels, above described,
were navigating the waters, where the city of Glasgow now
stands, the whole of the low lands which bordered the
present estuary of the Clyde, formed the bed of a shallow
sea. The emergence appears to have taken place gradually
and by intermittent movements, for Mr. Buchanan describes
several narrow terraces one above the other on the site of the
city itself, with steep intervening slopes composed of the
laminated estuary formation. Each terrace and steep slope
probably mark pauses in the process of upheaval, during
which low cliffs were formed, with beaches at their base.
Five of the canoes were found within the precincts of the
city at different heights on or near such terraces.
As to the date of the upheaval, the greater part of it
cannot be assigned to the stone period, but must have taken
place after tools of metal had come into use.
Until lately, when attempts were made to estimate the
probable antiquity of such changes of level, it was confidently
assumed, as a safe starting-point, that no alteration had oc
curred in the relative level of land and sea, in the central
district of Scotland, since the construction of the Eoman or
Pictish wall (the ' Wall of Antonine '), which reached from
the Firth of Forth to that of the Clyde. The two extremities,
it was said, of this ancient structure, bear such a relation to
the present level of the two estuaries, that neither subsidence
nor elevation of the land could have occurred for seven
teen centuries at least.
But Mr. G-eikie has lately shown that a depression of
* Geikie, Geol. Quart. Journ. vol. xviii., p. 222. 1862.
E 2
52 INFERENCES FROM RECENT EXPLORATIONS. CHAP. in.
twenty-five feet on the Forth would not lay the eastern
extremity of the Eoman wall at Carriden under water, and
he was therefore desirous of knowing whether the western
end of the same would be submerged by a similar amount of
subsidence. It has always been acknowledged that the wall
terminated upon an eminence called the Chapel Hill, near
the village of West Kilpatrick, on the Clyde. The foot of
this hill, Mr. Greikie estimates to be about twenty-five or
twenty-seven feet above high-water mark, so that a subsi
dence of twenty-five feet could not lay it under water. Anti
quaries have sometimes wondered that the Eomans did not
carry the wall farther west than this Chapel Hill ; but Mr.
Greikie now suggests, in explanation, that all the low land
at present intervening between that point and the mouth of
the Severn, was, sixteen or seventeen centuries ago, washed
by the tides at high water.
The wall of Antonine, therefore, yields no evidence in
favour of the land having remained stationary since the time
of the Komans, but on the contrary, appears to indicate that
since its erection the land has actually risen. Eecent explo
rations by Mr. Geikie and Dr. Young, of the sites of the old
Roman harbours along the southern margin of the Firth of
Forth, lead to similar inferences. In the first place, it has
long been known that there is a raised beach containing
marine shells of living littoral species, about twenty-five feet
high, at Leith, as well as at other places along the coast above
and below Edinburgh. Inveresk, a few miles below that city,
is the site of an ancient Eoman port, and if we suppose the
sea at high water to have washed the foot of the heights on
which the town stood, the tide would have ascended far up
the valley of the Esk, and would have made the mouth of
that river a safe and commodious harbour ; whereas, had it
been a shoaling estuary, as at present, it is difficult to see
how the Eomans should have made choice of it as a port.
CHAP. in. FOSSIL WHALES NEAR STIRLING. 53
At Cramond, at the mouth of the river Almond, above
Edinburgh, was Alaterva, the chief Eoman harbour on the
southern coast of the Forth, where numerous coins, urns,
sculptured stones, and the remnant of a harbour have been
detected. The old Eoman quays built along what must then
have been the sea margin, have been found on what is now dry
land, and although some silt carried down in suspension by
the waters of the Forth may account for a part of the gain
of low land, we yet require an upward movement of about
twenty feet to explain the growth of the dreary expanse of
mud now stretching along the shore and extending out
wards, where it attains its greatest breadth, well-nigh two
miles, across which vessels, even of light burden can now
only venture at full tide. Had these shoals existed eighteen
centuries ago, they would have prevented the Eomans from
selecting this as their chief port ; whereas, if the land were
now to sink twenty feet, Cramond would unquestionably be
the best natural harbour along the whole of the south side of
the Forth.*
Corresponding in level with the raised beach at Leith,
above mentioned (or about twenty-five feet above high- water
mark), is the Carse of Stirling, a low tract of land consisting
of loamy and peaty beds, in which several skeletons of whales
of large size have been found. One of these was dug up
at Airthrief, near Stirling, about a mile from the river, and
seven miles from the sea. Mr. Bald mentions, that near it
were found two pieces of stag's horn, artificially cut, through
one of which a hole, about an inch in diameter, had been per
forated. Another whale, eighty-five feet long, was found at
Dimmore, a few miles below Stirling J, which, like that of
Airthrie, lay about twenty feet above high-water mark. Three
* Greikie, Edinb. New Phil. Journ. "Wernerian Society, iii. p. 327.
for July 1861. J Edinburgh Philosophical Jour-
f Bald, Edinburgh Philosophical nal, xi. pp. 220, 415.
Journal, i. p. 393; and Memoirs,
54 UPRAISED MARINE STRATA. CHAP. ill.
other skeletons of whales were found at Blair Drummond,
between the years 1819 and 1824, seven miles up the estuary
above Stirling*, also at an elevation of between twenty and
thirty feet above the sea. Near two of these whales, pointed
instruments of deer's horn were found, one of which retained
part of a wooden handle, probably preserved by having been
enclosed in peat. This weapon is now in the museum at
Edinburgh.
The position of these fossil whales and bone implements,
and still more of an iron anchor found in the Carse of Falkirk,
below Stirling, shows that the upheaval by which the
raised beach of Leith was laid dry extended far westward
probably as far as the Clyde, where, as we have seen, marine
strata containing buried canoes rise to a similar height above
the sea.
The same upward movement which reached simultaneously
east and west from sea to sea was also felt as far north as
the estuary of the Tay. This may be inferred from the Celtic
name of Inch being attached to many hillocks, which rise
above the general level of the alluvial plains, implying that
these eminences were once surrounded by water or marshy
ground. At various localities also in the silt of the Carse
of Growrie iron implements have been found.
The raised beach, also containing a great number of marine
shells of recent species, traced up to a height of fourteen feet
above the sea by Mr. W. J. Hamilton at Elie, on the
southern coast of Fife, is doubtless another effect of the
same extensive upheaval. f A similar movement would also
account for some changes which antiquaries have recorded
much farther south, on the borders of the Solway Frith ;
though in this case, as in that of the estuary of the Forth,
the conversion of sea into land has always been referred
* Memoirs, Wernerian Society, r. f Proceedings of Geological Society,
p. 440. 1833, vol. ii. p. 280.
CHAP. m. PROBABLE AGE OF UPRAISED STRATA. 55
to the silting up of estuaries, and not to upheaval. Thus
Horsley insists on the difficulty of explaining the position of
certain Eoman stations, on the Solway, the Forth, and the
Clyde, without assuming that the sea has been excluded from
certain areas which it formerly occupied.*
On a review of the whole evidence, geological and archaBo-
logical, afforded by the Scottish coast-line, we may conclude
that the last upheaval of twenty-five feet took place not only
since the first human population settled in the island ; but
long after metallic implements had come into use, and there
seems even a strong presumption in favour of the opinion
that the date of the elevation may have been subsequent to
the Eoman occupation.
But the twenty-five feet rise is only the last stage of a long
antecedent process of elevation, for examples of recent marine
shells have been observed forty feet and upwards above the sea
in Ayrshire. At one of these localities, Mr. Smith of Jordan-
hill informs me that a rude ornament made of cannel coal
has been found on the coast in the parish of Dundonald,
lying fifty feet above the sea-level, on the surface of the
boulder-clay or till, and covered with gravel, containing
marine shells. If we suppose the upward movement to
have been uniform in central Scotland before and after the
Eoman era, and assume that as twenty-five feet indicate
seventeen centuries, so fifty feet imply a lapse of twice that
number, or 3400 years, we should then carry back the date
of the ornament in question to fifteen centuries before our era,
or to the days of Pharaoh, and the period usually assigned
to the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt.
But all such estimates must be considered, in the present
state of science, as tentative and conjectural, since the rate
of movement of the land may not have been uniform, and its
* Britannia, p. 157. I860.
56 UPRAISED STRATA IN SWEDEN AND NORWAY. CHAP. m.
direction not always upwards, and there may have been long
stationary periods, one of which of more than usual duration
seems indicated by the forty foot raised beach, which has
been traced for vast distances along the western coast of
Scotland.
Coast of Cornwall.
Sir H. De la Beche has adduced several proofs of changes
of level, in the course of the human period, in his ' Report on
the Geology of Cornwall and Devon for 1839.' He mentions
(p. 406) that several human skulls and works of art, buried
in an estuary deposit, were found in mining gravel for tin, at
Pertuan, the skulls lying at the depth of forty feet from the
surface, and others at Carnon, at the depth of fifty-three feet.
The overlying strata were marine, containing sea-shells of
living species, and bones of whales, besides the remains of
several living species of mammalia.
Other examples of works of art, such as stone hatchets,
canoes, and ships, buried in ancient river-beds in England,
and in peat and shell-marl, I have mentioned in my work
before cited.*
Sweden and Norway.
In the same work I have shown that near Stockholm, in
Sweden, there occur, at slight elevations above the sea-level,
horizontal beds of sand, loam, and marl, containing the same
peculiar assemblage of testacea which now live in the brackish
waters of the Baltic. Mingled with these, at different depths,
have been detected various works of art implying a rude state
of civilization, and some vessels built before the introduction of
iron, and even the remains of an ancient hut, the whole ma
rine formation having been upraised, so that the upper beds
* Principles of Geology.
CHAP. Hi. UPRAISED STRATA IN SWEDEN AND NORWAY. 57
are now sixty feet higher than the surface of the Baltic. In
the neighbourhood of these recent strata, both to the north
west and south of Stockholm, other deposits similar in mineral
composition occur, which ascend to greater heights, in which
precisely the same assemblage of fossil shells is met with, but
without any intermixture, so far as is yet known, of human
bones or fabricated articles.
On the opposite or western coast of Sweden, at Uddevalla,
post-tertiary strata, containing recent shells, not of that
brackish water character peculiar to the Baltic, but such as
now live in the Northern Ocean, ascend to the height of
200 feet; and beds of clay and sand of the same age attain
elevations of 300 and even 600 feet in Norway, where they
have been usually described as ' raised beaches.' They are,
however, thick deposits of submarine origin, spreading far
and wide, and filling valleys in the granite and gneiss, just
as the tertiary formations, in different parts of Europe, cover
or fill depressions in the older rocks.
Although the fossil fauna characterising these upraised
sands and clays consists exclusively of existing northern
species of testacea, it is more than probable that they may
not all belong to that division of the post-tertiary strata
which we are now considering. If the contemporary mam
malia were known, they would, in all likelihood, be found to
be referable, at least in part, to extinct species ; for, according
to Loven (an able living naturalist of Norway), the species
do not constitute such an assemblage as now inhabits corre
sponding latitudes in the Grerman Ocean. On the contrary,
they decidedly represent a more arctic fauna. In order to
find the same species nourishing in equal abundance, or in
many cases to find them at all, we must go northwards to
higher latitudes than Uddevalla in Sweden, or even nearer
the pole than Central Norway.
Judging by the uniformity of climate now prevailing from
58 UPRAISED STRATA IN SWEDEN AND NORWAY. CHAP. III.
century to century, and the insensible rate of variation in.
the geographical distribution of organic beings in our own
times, we may presume that an extremely lengthened period
was required, even for so slight a modification in the range
of the. molluscous fauna, as that of which the evidence is
here brought to light. There are also other independent
reasons for suspecting that the antiquity of these deposits
may be indefinitely great as compared to the historical
period. I allude to their present elevation above the sea,
some of them rising, in Norway, to the height of 600 feet
or more. The upward movement now in progress in parts
of Norway and Sweden, extends, as I have elsewhere shown*,
throughout an area about 1000 miles north and south, and
for an unknown distance east and west, the amount of eleva
tion always increasing as we proceed towards the North Cape,
where it is said to equal five feet in a century. If we could
assume that there had been an average rise of two and a half
feet in each hundred years for the last fifty centuries, this
would give an elevation of 125 feet in that period. In other
words, it would follow that the shores, and a considerable
area of the former bed of the North Sea, had been uplifted
vertically to that amount, and converted into land in the
course of the last 5000 years. A mean rate of continuous
vertical elevation of two and a half feet in a century would,
I conceive, be a high average ; yet, even if this be assumed,
it would require 24,000 years for parts of the sea-coast of
Norway, where the post-tertiary marine strata occur, to attain
the height of 600 feet.
* Principles, 9th ed. ch. xxx.
CHAP. iv. DISCOVERIES OF MM. TOUENAL AND CHRISTOL. 59
CHAPTEK IV.
POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD BONES OF MAN AND EXTINCT
MAMMALIA IN BELGIAN CAVERNS.
EARLIEST DISCOVERIES IN CAVES OF LANGUEDOC OF HUMAN REMAINS
WITH BONES OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA RESEARCHES IN 1833 OF
DR. SCHMERLINQ IN THE LIEGE CAVERNS SCATTERED PORTIONS OF
HUMAN SKELETONS ASSOCIATED WITH BONES OF ELEPHANT AND
RHINOCEROS DISTRIBUTION AND PROBABLE MODE OF INTRODUCTION
OF THE BONES IMPLEMENTS OF FLINT AND BONE SCHMERLING's
CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN IGNORED PRESENT
STATE OF THE BELGIAN CAVES HUMAN BONES RECENTLY FOUND IN
CAVE OF ENGIHOUL ENGULFED RIVERS STALAGMITIC CRUST
ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN REMAINS IN BELGIUM HOW PROVED.
HAVING- hitherto considered those formations in which
both the fossil shells and the mammalia are of living
species, we may now turn our attention to those of older
date, in which the shells being all recent, some of the ac
companying mammalia are extinct, or belong to species not
known to have lived within the times of history or tradition.
Discoveries of MM. Tournal and Christol in 1828, in the
South of France. '
In the Principles of Geology, when treating of the
fossil remains found in alluvium, and the mud of caverns, I
gave an account in 1832 of the investigations made by
MM. Tournal and Christol in the South of France.*
M. Tournal stated in his memoir, that in the cavern of
Bize, in the department of the Aude, he had found human
bones and teeth, together with fragments of rude pottery, in
* let ed. vol. ii. ch. xiv., 1832 ; and 9th ed. p. 738, 1853.
60 DISCOVERIES OF MM. TOURNAL AND CHRISTOL. CHAP. iv.
the same mud and breccia cemented by stalagmite in which
land-shells of living species were embedded, and the bones
of mammalia, some of extinct, others of recent species. The
human bones were declared by his fellow-labourer, M. Marcel
de Serres, to be in the same chemical condition as those of
the accompanying quadrupeds.*
Speaking of these fossils of the Bize cavern five years
later, M. Tournal observed, that they could not be referred,
as some suggested, to a ' diluvial catastrophe,' for they
evidently had not been washed in suddenly by a transient
flood, but must have been introduced gradually, together
with the enveloping mud and pebbles, at successive periods. f
M. Christol, who was engaged at the same time in
similar researches in another part of Languedoc, published an
account of them a year later, in which he described some
human bones, as occurring in the cavern of Pondres, near
Nismes, in the same mud with the bones of an extinct hyaena
and rhinoceros. :f The cavern was in this instance filled up
to the roof with mud and gravel, in which fragments of two
kinds of pottery were detected, the lowest and rudest near
the bottom of the cave, below the level of the extinct mam
malia.
It has never been questioned that the hysena and rhinoceros
found by M. Christol were of extinct species ; but whether
the animals enumerated by M. Tournal might not all of them
be referred to quadrupeds which are known to have been
living in Europe in the historical period seems doubtful.
They were said to consist of a stag, an antelope, and a goat,
all named by M. Marcel de Serres as new; but the majority
of paleontologists do not agree with this opinion. Still it is
true, as M. Lartet remarks, that the fauna of the cavern of
* Annales des Sciences Naturelles, J Christol, Notice surles Ossements
torn. xv. p. 348 : 1 828. humains des Cavernes du Gard. Mont-
f Annales de Chimie et de Phy- pellier, 1829.
sique, p. 161 : 1833.
CHAP. iv. DESNOYERS ON HUMAN AND OTHER CAVE BONES. 61
Bize must be of very high antiquity, as shown by the pre
sence, not only of the Lithuanian aurochs (Bison europoeus),
but also of the reindeer, which has not been an inhabitant
of the South of France in historical times, and which, in that
country, is almost everywhere associated, whether in ancient
alluvium or in the mud of caverns, with the mammoth.
In my> work before cited *, I stated that M. Desnoyers,
an observer equally well versed in geology and archaeology,
had disputed the conclusion arrived at by MM. Tournal and
Christol, that the fossil rhinoceros, hysena, bear, and other
lost species, had once been inhabitants of France contem
poraneously with man. * The flint hatchets and arrow-heads '
he said, ' and the pointed bones and coarse pottery of many
French and English caves, agree precisely in character with
those found in the tumuli, and under the dolmens (rude
altars of unhewn stone) of the primitive inhabitants of Gaul,
Britain, and Germany. The human bones, therefore, in the
caves which are associated with such fabricated objects, must
belong not to antediluvian periods, but to a people in the
same stage of civilization as those who constructed the
tumuli and altars.'
f In the Gaulish monuments,' he added, f we find, together
with the objects of industry above mentioned, the bones of
wild and domestic animals of species now inhabiting Europe,
particularly of deer, sheep, wild boars, dogs, horses, and
oxen. This fact has been ascertained in Quercy, and other
provinces ; and it is supposed by antiquaries that the animals
in question were placed beneath the Celtic altars in memory
of sacrifices offered to the Gaulish divinity Hesus, and in the
tombs to commemorate funeral repasts, and also from a
superstition prevalent among savage nations, which induces
them to lay up provisions for the manes of the dead in a
* Principles, 9th eel. p. 739.
62 DESNOYERS ON HUMAN AND OTHER CAVE BONES. CHAP. iv.
future life. But in none of these ancient monuments have
any bones been found of the elephant, rhinoceros, hyaena,
tiger, and other quadrupeds, such as are found in caves,
which might certainly have been expected, had these species
continued to flourish at the time that this part of Gaul was
inhabited by man.'*
After giving no small weight to the arguments of M. Des-
noyers, and the writings of Dr. Buckland on the same subject,
and visiting myself several caves in Germany, I came to the
opinion that the human bones mixed with those of extinct
animals, in osseous breccias and cavern mud, in different
parts of Europe, were probably not coeval. The caverns
having been at one period the dens of wild beasts, and having
served at other times as places of human habitation, worship,
sepulture, concealment, or defence, one might easily conceive
that the bones of man and those of animals, which were
strewed over the floors of subterranean cavities, or which
had fallen into tortuous rents connecting them with the
surface, might, when swept away by floods, be mingled in
one promiscuous heap in the same ossiferous mud or
breccia.f
That such intermixtures have really taken place in some
caverns, and that geologists have occasionally been deceived,
and have assigned to one and the same period fossils which
had really been introduced at successive times, will readily
be conceded. But of late years we have obtained convincing
proofs, as we shall see in the sequel, that the mammoth, and
many other extinct mammalian species very common in caves,
occur also in undisturbed alluvium, embedded in such a
manner with works of art, as to leave no room for doubt
that man and the 'mammoth coexisted. Such discoveries have
* Desnoyers, Bulletin de la Societe Universelle d'Histoire Naturelle. Pa-
Geologique de France, torn. ii. p. 252 ; ris, 1845.
and article on Caverns, Dictionnaire t Principles, 9th ed. p. 740.
CHAP. IV. DR. SCHMERLING ON HUMAN AND OTHER BONES. 63
led me, and other geologists, to reconsider the evidence pre
viously derived from caves "brought forward in proof of
the high antiquity of man. With a view of re-examining
this evidence, I have lately explored several caverns in
Belgium and other countries, and re-read the principal
memoirs and treatises treating of the fossil remains preserved
in them, the results of which inquiries I shall now proceed
to lay before the reader.
Researches, in 1833-1834, of Dr. Schmerling in the Caverns
near Liege.
The late Dr. Schmerling of Liege, a skillful anatomist and
paleontologist, after devoting several years to the exploring
of the numerous ossiferous caverns which border the valleys
of the Meuse and its tributaries, published two volumes,
descriptive of the contents of more than forty caverns. One
of these volumes consisted of an atlas of plates, illustrative of
the fossil bones.*
Many of the caverns had never before been entered by
scientific observers, and their floors were encrusted with
unbroken stalagmite. At a very early stage of his investiga
tions, Dr. Schmerling found the bones of man so rolled and
scattered, as to preclude all idea of their having been inten
tionally buried on the spot. He also remarked that they were
of the same colour, and in the same condition as to the amount
of animal matter contained in them, as those of the accom
panying animals, some of which, like the cave-bear, hysena,
elephant, and rhinoceros, were extinct ; others, like the wild
cat, beaver, wild boar, roe-deer, wolf, and hedgehog, still extant.
The fossils were lighter than fresh bones, except such as had
their pores filled with carbonate of lime, in which case they
* Kecherches sur les Ossements fos- a Province de Liege. Liege, 1833
siles decouverts dans les Cavernes de 1834.
64 HUMAN AND OTHER BONES IN LIE*GE CAVERNS. CHAP. iv.
were often much heavier. The human remains of most
frequent occurrence were teeth detached from the jaw, and
the carpal, metacarpal, tarsal, metatarsal, and phalangial
bones separated from the rest of the skeleton. The cor
responding bones of the cave-bear, the most abundant of
the accompanying mammalia, were also found in the Liege
caverns more commonly than any others, and in the same
scattered condition. Occasionally, some of the long bones of
mammalia were observed to have been first broken across,
and then reunited or cemented again by stalagmite, as they
lay on the floor of the cave.
No gnawed bones nor any coprolites were found by
Schmerling. He therefore inferred that the caverns of the
province of Liege had not been the dens of wild beasts,
but that their organic and inorganic contents had been swept
into them by streams communicating with the surface of the
country. The bones, he suggested, may often have been
rolled in the beds of such streams before they reached their
underground destination. To the same agency the intro
duction of many land-shells dispersed through the cave-mud
was ascribed, such as Helix nemoralis, H. lapicida, H. po-
matia, and others of living species. Mingled with such shells,
in some rare instances, the bones of fresh-water fish, and of a
snake (Coluber\ as well as of several birds, were detected.
The occurrence here and there of bones in a very perfect
state, or of several bones belonging to the same skeleton in
natural juxtaposition, and having all their most delicate
apophyses uninjured, while many accompanying bones in the
same breccia were rolled, broken, or decayed, was accounted
for by supposing that portions of carcasses were sometimes
floated in during floods while still clothed with their flesh.
No example was discovered of an entire skeleton, not even of
one of the smaller mammalia, the bones of which are usually
the least injured.
CHAP. iv. REMAINS IN THE ENGIS AND ENGIHOUL CAYES. 65
The incompleteness of each skeleton was especially ascer
tained in regard to the human subjects, Dr. Schmerling being
careful, whenever a fragment of such presented itself, to explore
the cavern himself, and see whether any other bones of the
same skeleton could be found. In the Engis cavern, distant
about eight miles to the south-west of Liege, on the left bank of
the Meuse, the remains of at least three human individuals were
disinterred. The skull of one of these, that of a young
person, was embedded by the side of a mammoth's tooth. It
was entire, but so fragile, that nearly all of it fell to pieces
during its extraction. Another skull, that of an adult in
dividual (see fig. 2, p. 81), and the only one preserved by Dr.
Schmerling in a sufficient state of integrity to enable the
anatomist to speculate on the race to which it belonged, was
buried five feet deep in a breccia, in which the tooth of a
rhinoceros, several bones of a horse, and some of the rein
deer, together with some ruminants, occurred. This skull,
now in the museum of the University of Liege, is figured in
Chap. V., where further observations will be offered on its
anatomical character, after a fuller account of the contents
of the Liege caverns has been laid before the reader.
On the right bank of the Meuse, on the opposite side of
the river to Engis, it the cavern of Engihoul. Both were
observed to abound greatly in the bones of extinct animals
mingled with those of man ; but with this difference, that
whereas in the Engis cave there were several human crania
and very few other bones, in Engihoul there occurred nu
merous bones of the extremities belonging to at least three
human individuals, and only two small fragments of a
cranium. The like capricious distribution held good in
other caverns, especially with reference to the cave-bear, the
most frequent of the extinct mammalia. Thus, for example in
the cave of Chokier, skulls of the bear were few, and other
parts of the skeleton abundant, whereas in several other
F
66 IMPLEMENTS OF FLINT AND BONE. CHAP. IV.
caverns these proportions were exactly reversed, while at
Groffontaine skulls of the bear and other parts of the skeleton
were found in their natural numerical proportions. Speaking
generally, it may be said that human bones, where any were
met with, occurred at all depths in the cave-mud and gravel,
sometimes above and sometimes below those of the bear,
elephant, rhinoceros, hysena, &c.
Some rude flint implements of the kind commonly called
flint knives or flakes, of a triangular form in the cross section
(as in fig. 14, p. 118), were found by Schmerling dispersed
generally through the cave-mud, but he was too much en
grossed with his osteological inquiries to collect them dili
gently. He preserved some few of them, however, which I
have seen in the museum at Liege. He also discovered in the
cave of Chokier, two and a half miles south-west from Liege, a
polished and jointed needle-shaped bone, with a hole pierced
obliquely through it at the base ; such a cavity, he observed,
as had never given passage to an artery. This instrument
was embedded in the same matrix with the remains of a
rhinoceros.*
Another cut bone and several artificially shaped flints were
found in the Engis cave, near the human skulls before alluded
to. Schmerling observed, and we shall have to refer to the
fact in the sequel (Chap. VIII.), that although in some forty
fossiliferous caves explored by him human bones were the
exception, yet these flint implements were universal, and he
added that ' none of them could have been subsequently in
troduced, being precisely in the same position as the remains
of the accompanying animals.' ( I therefore,' he continues,
( attach great importance to their presence ; for even if I had
not found the human bones under conditions entirely favour
able to their being considered as belonging to the ante-
* Schmerling, part ii. p. 177.
CHAP. iv. DR. SCHMERLING ON LIEGE CAVERNS. 67
diluvian epoch, proofs of man's existence would still have
been supplied by the cut bones and worked flints.' *
Dr. Schmerling, therefore, had no hesitation in concluding
from the various facts ascertained by him, that man once
lived in the Liege district contemporaneously with the cave-
bear, and several other extinct species of quadrupeds. But
he was much at a loss when he attempted to invent a
theory to explain the former state of the fauna of the region
now drained by the Meuse ; for he shared the notion, then
very prevalent among naturalists, that the mammoth and the
hysenaf were beasts of a warmer climate than that now
proper to Western Europe. In order to account for the
presence of such ' tropical species,' he was half-inclined to
imagine that they had been transported by a flood from some
distant region ; then again he raised the question whether
they might not have been washed out of an older alluvium,
which may have pre-existed in the neighbourhood. This last
hypothesis was directly at variance with his own statements,
that the remains of the mammoth and hysena were identical
in appearance, colour, and chemical condition with those of
the bear and other associated fossil animals, none of which
exhibited signs of having been previously enveloped in any
dissimilar matrix. Another enigma which led Schmerling
astray in some of his geological speculations was the supposed
presence of the agouti, a South-American rodent, 'proper
to the torrid zone.' My friend M. Lartet, guided by Schmer-
ling's figures of the teeth of this species, suggests, and I have
little doubt with good reason, that they appertain to the
porcupine, a genus found fossil in post-pliocene deposits of
certain caverns in the south of France.
In the year 1833, I passed through Liege, on my way to
the Ehine, and conversed with Dr. Schmerling, who showed
* Schmerling, partii. p. 179. t Ibid, part ii. pp. 70, 96.
F 2
68 SCHMEELING ON ANTIQUITY OF MAN. CHAP. iv.
me his splendid collection, and when I expressed some
incredulity respecting the alleged antiquity of the fossil
human bones, he pointedly remarked, that if I doubted their
having been contemporaneous with the bear or rhinoceros,
on the ground of man being a species of more modern date,
I ought equally to doubt the coexistence of all the other
living species, such as the red deer, roe, wild cat, wild boar,
wolf, fox, weasel, beaver, hare, rabbit, hedgehog, mole, dor
mouse, field-mouse, water-rat, shrew, and others, the bones
of which he had found scattered everywhere indiscriminately
through the same mud with the extinct quadrupeds. The
year after this conversation I cited Schmerling's opinions,
and the facts bearing on the antiquity of man, in the 3rd
edition of my Principles of Geology (p. 161, 1834), and in
succeeding editions, without pretending to call in question
their trustworthiness, but at the same time without giving
them the weight which I now consider they were entitled
to. He had accumulated ample evidence to prove that man
had been introduced into the earth at an earlier period than
geologists were then willing to believe.
One positive fact, it will be said, attested by so competent a
witness, ought to have outweighed any amount of negative
testimony, previously accumulated, respecting the non-occur
rence elsewhere of human remains in formations of the like
antiquity. In reply, I can only plead that a discovery which
seems to contradict the general tenor of previous investiga
tions is naturally received with much hesitation. To have un
dertaken in 1832, with a view of testing its truth, to follow the
Belgian philosopher through every stage of his observations
and proofs, would have been no easy task even for one well-
skilled in geology and osteology. To be let down, as Schmer-
ling was, day after day, by a rope tied to a tree, so as to slide
to the foot of the first opening of the Engis cave,* where the
* Sclimerling, part i. p. 30.
CHAP. iv. PRESENT STATE OF BELGIAN CAYES. 69
best-preserved human skulls were found; and, after thus
gaining access to the first subterranean gallery, to creep on all
fours through a contracted passage leading to larger chambers,
there to superintend by torchlight, week after week and
year after year, the workmen who were breaking through
the stalagmitic crust as hard as marble, in order to remove
piece by piece the underlying bone-breccia nearly as hard ;
to stand for hours with one's feet in the mud, and with
water dripping from the roof on one's head, in order to mark
the position and guard against the loss of each single bone
of a skeleton ; and at length, after finding leisure, strength,
and courage for all these operations, to look forward, as the
fruits of one's labour, to the publication of unwelcome in
telligence, opposed to the prepossessions of the scientific
as well as. of the unscientific public; when these circum
stances are taken into account, we need scarcely wonder, not
only that a passing traveller failed to stop and scrutinise the
evidence, but that a quarter of a century should have elapsed
before even the neighbouring professors of the University
of Liege came forth to vindicate the truthfulness of their
indefatigable and clear-sighted countryman.
In 1860, when I revisited Liege, twenty-six years after my
interview with Schmerling, I found that several of the
caverns described by him had in the interval been annihilated.
Not a vestige, for example, of the caves of Engis, Chokier,
and Groffontaine remained. The calcareous stone, in the
heart of which the cavities once existed, had been quarried
away, and removed bodily for building and lime-making.
Fortunately, a great part of the Engihoul cavern, situated on
the right bank of the Meuse, was still in the same state as
when Schmerling delved into it in 1831, and drew from it
the bones of three human skeletons. I determined, there
fore, to examine it, and was so fortunate as to obtain the as
sistance of a zealous naturalist of Liege, Professor Malaise,
70 PRESENT STATE OF BELGIAN CAVES. CHAP. iv.
who accompanied me to the cavern, where we engaged some
workmen to break through the crust of stalagmite, so that
we could search for bones in the undisturbed earth beneath.
Bones and teeth of the cave-bear were soon found, and
several other extinct quadrupeds which Schmerling has enu
merated. My companion, continuing the work perseveringly
for weeks after my departure, succeeded at length in ex
tracting from the same deposit, at the depth of two feet
below the crust of stalagmite, three fragments of a human
skull, and two perfect lower jaws with teeth, all associated in
such a manner with the bones of bears, large pachyderms,
and ruminants, and so precisely resembling these in colour
and state of preservation, as to leave no doubt in his mind
that man was contemporary with the extinct animals. Pro
fessor Malaise has given figures of the human remains in the
bulletin of the royal academy of Belgium for I860.*
The rock in which the Liege caverns occur belongs gene
rally to the carboniferous or mountain limestone, in some
few cases only to the older Devonian formation. Whenever
the work of destruction has not gone too far, magnificent
sections, sometimes 200 and 300 feet in height, are exposed
to view. They confirm Schmerling's doctrine, that most of
the materials, organic and inorganic, now filling the caverns,
have been washed into them through narrow vertical or
oblique fissures, the upper extremities of which are choked
up with soil and gravel, and would scarcely ever be discover
able at the surface, especially in so wooded a country. Among
the sections obtained by quarrying, one of the finest which I
saw was in the beautiful valley of Fond du Foret, above
Chaudefontaine, not far from the village of Magnee, where
one of the rents communicating with the surface has been
filled up to the brim with rounded and half-rounded stones,
* Tom. x. p. 546.
CHAP. iv. STALACTITE IN CAVES. 71
angular pieces of limestone and shale, besides sand and mud,
together with bones, chiefly of the cave-bear. Connected with
this main duct, which is from one to two feet in width, are
several minor ones, each from one to three inches wide, also
extending to the upper country or table-land, and choked up
with similar materials. They are inclined at angles of 30
and 40, their walls being generally coated with stalactite,
pieces of which have here and there been broken off and
mingled with the contents of the rents, thus helping to
explain why we so often meet with detached pieces of that
substance in the mud and breccia of the Belgian caves. It is
not easy to conceive that a solid horizontal floor of hard
stalagmite should, after its formation, be broken up by run
ning water ; but when the walls of steep and tortuous rents,
serving as feeders to the principal fissures and to inferior
vaults and galleries are encrusted with stalagmite, some of
the incrustation may readily be torn up when heavy fragments
of rock are hurried by a flood through passages inclined at
angles of 30 or 40.
The decay and decomposition of the fossil bones seem to
have been arrested in most of the caves by a constant sup
ply of water charged with carbonate of lime, which dripped
from the roofs while the caves were becoming gradually filled
up. By similar agency the mud, sand, and pebbles were
usually consolidated.
The following explanation of this phenomenon has been
suggested by the eminent chemist Liebig. On the surface of
Franconia, where the limestone abounds in caverns, is a
fertile soil in which vegetable matter is continually decaying.
This mould or humus, being acted on by moisture and air,
evolves carbonic acid, which is dissolved by rain. The rain
water, thus impregnated, permeates the porous limestone,
dissolves a portion of it, and afterwards, when the excess of
carbonic acid evaporates in the caverns, parts with the
72 ENGULFED RIVERS NEAR LI^GE. CHAP. iv.
calcareous matter and forms stalactite. So long as water
flows, even occasionally, through a suite of caverns, no layer
of pure stalagmite can be produced ; hence the formation of
such a layer, is generally an event posterior in date to the
cessation of the old system of drainage, an event which might
be brought about by an earthquake causing new fissures, or
by the river wearing its way down to a lower level, and
thenceforth running in a new channel.
In all the subterranean cavities, more than forty in num
ber, explored by Schmerling, he only observed one cave,
namely that of Chokier, where there were two regular layers
of stalagmite, divided by fossiliferous cave-mud. In this
instance, we may suppose that the stream, after flowing for
a long period at one level, cut its way down to an inferior
suite of caverns, and, flowing through them for centuries,
choked them up with debris ; after which it rose once more
to its original higher level : just as in the mountain limestone
district of Yorkshire some rivers, habitually absorbed by a
( swallow hole,' are occasionally unable to discharge all their
water through it^; in which case they rise and rush through
a higher subterranean passage, which was at some former
period in the regular line of drainage, as is often attested
by the fluviatile gravel still contained in it.
There are now in the basin of the Meuse, not far from Liege,
several examples of engulfed brooks and rivers : some of
them, like that of St. Hadelin, east of Chaudefontaine, which
reappears after an underground course of a mile or two ;
others, like the Vesdre, which is lost near G-offontaine, and
after a time re-emerges ; some, again, like the torrent near
Magnee, which, after entering a cave, never again comes to
the day. In the season of floods such streams are turbid at
their entrance, but clear as a mountain-spring where they
issue again ; so that they must be slowly filling up cavities
in the interior with mud, sand, pebbles, snail-shells, and
CHAP. iv. ANTIQUITY OF Llf GE CAVE-BONES. 73
the bones of animals which may be carried away during
floods.
The manner in which some of the large thigh and shank
bones of the rhinoceros and other pachyderms are rounded,
while some of the smaller bones of the same creatures, and
of the hysena, bear, and horse, are reduced to pebbles, shows
that they were often transported for some distance in the
channels of torrents, before they found a resting-place.
When we desire to reason or speculate on the probable
antiquity of human bones found fossil in such situations as
the caverns near Liege, there are two classes of evidence to
which we may appeal for our guidance. First, considerations
of the time required to allow of many species of carnivorous
and herbivorous animals, which flourished in the cave period,
becoming first scarce, and then so entirely extinct as we
have seen that they had become before the era of the Danish
peat and Swiss lake dwellings : secondly, the great number
of centuries necessary for the conversion of the physical
geography of the Liege district from its ancient to its present
configuration ; so many old underground channels, through
which brooks and rivers flowed in the cave period, being now
laid dry and choked up.
The great alterations which have taken place in the shape
of the valley of the Meuse and some of its tributaries
are often demonstrated by the abrupt manner in which the
mouths of fossiliferous caverns open in the face of perpen
dicular precipices 200 feet or more in height above the
present streams. There appears also, in many cases, to be
such a correspondence in the openings of caverns on opposite
sides of some of the valleys, both large and small, as to
incline one to suspect that they originally belonged to a
series of tunnels and galleries which were continuous before
the present system of drainage came into play, or before the
existing valleys were scooped out. Other signs of subsequent
74 ANTIQUITY OF LIEGE C AYE-BONES. CHAP. iv.
fluctuations are afforded by gravel containing elephant's
bones at slight elevations above the Meuse and several of its
tributaries. The loess also, in the suburbs and neighbour
hood of Liege, occurring at various heights in patches lying
at between 20 and 200 feet above the river, cannot be
explained without supposing the filling up and re-excavation
of the valleys at a period posterior to the washing in of the
animal remains into most of the old caverns. It may be
objected that, according to the present rate of change, no
lapse of ages would suffice to bring about such revolutions
in physical geography as we are here contemplating. This
may be true. It is more than probable that the rate of
change was once far more active than it is now. Some of
the nearest volcanoes, namely, those of the Lower Eifel
about sixty miles to the eastward, seem to have been in
eruption in post-pliocene times, and may perhaps have been
connected and coeval with repeated risings or sinkings of the
land in the basin of the Meuse. It might be said, with
equal truth, that according to the present course of events,
no series of ages would suffice to reproduce such an assem-.
blage of cones and craters as those of the Eifel (near An-
dernach for example); and yet ^ome of them may be of
sufficiently modern date to belong to the era when man was
contemporary with the mammoth and rhinoceros in the
basin of the Meuse.
But, although we may be unable to estimate the minimum
of time required for the changes in physical geography above
alluded to, we cannot fail to perceive that the duration of
the period must have been very protracted, and that other ages
of comparative inaction may have followed, separating the
post-pliocene from the historical periods, and constituting
an interval no less indefinite in its duration.
CHAP. T. NEANDERTHAL SKELETON.
CHAPTER V.
POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD FOSSIL HUMAN SKULLS OF THE
NEANDERTHAL AND ENGIS GATES.
HUMAN SKELETON FOUND IN CAVE NEAE DUSSELDORF ITS GEOLOGICAL
POSITION AND PROBABLE AGE ITS ABNORMAL AND APE-LIKE CHA
RACTERS FOSSIL HUMAN SKULL OF THE ENGIS CAVE NEAR LIEGE
PROFESSOB HUXLEY'S DESCRIPTION OF THESE SKULLS COMPARISON
OF EACH, WITH EXTREME VARIETIES OF THE NATIVE AUSTRALIAN
RACE RANGE OF CAPACITY IN THE HUMAN AND SIMIAN BRAINS
SKULL FROM BORREBY IN DENMARK CONCLUSIONS OF PROFESSOR
HUXLEY BEARING OF THE PECULIAR CHARACTERS OF THE NEAN
DERTHAL SKULL ON THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION.
Fossil human Skeleton of the Neanderthal Cave near
Dusseldorf.
TJEFORE I speak more particularly of the opinions which
JLJ anatomists have expressed respecting the osteological
characters of the human skull from Engis, near Liege,
mentioned in the last chapter and described by Dr. Schmer-
ling, it will be desirable to say something of the geological
position of another skull, or rather skeleton, which, on
account of its peculiar conformation, has excited no small
sensation in the last few years. I allude to the skull found
in 1857, in a cave situated in that part of the valley of the
Diissel, near Dusseldorf, which is called the Neanderthal.
The spot is a deep and narrow ravine about seventy English
miles north-east of the region of the Liege caverns treated
of in the last chapter, and close to the village and railway
station of Hochdal between Dusseldorf and Elberfeld. The
cave occurs in the precipitous southern or left side of the
winding ravine, about sixty feet above the stream, and a
76 GEOLOGICAL POSITION OF NEANDERTHAL SKELETON. CHAP. v.
hundred feet below the top of the cliff. The accompanying
section will give the reader an idea of its position.
Fig. 1
Section of the Neanderthal Cave near Diisseldorf.
a Cavern 60 feet above the Diissel, and 100 feet below the surface
of the country at c.
b Loam covering the floor of the cave near the bottom of which the
human skeleton was found.
b, c Kent connecting the cave with the upper surface of the country.
d Superficial sandy loam.
e Devonian limestone.
/ Terrace, or ledge of rock.
When Dr. Fuhlrott of Elberfeld first examined the cave,
he found it to be high enough to allow a man to enter.
The width was seven or eight feet, and the length or depth
fifteen. I visited the spot in 1860, in company with Dr.
Fuhlrott, who had the kindness to come expressly from
Elberfeld to be my guide, and who brought with him the
original fossil skull, and a cast of the same, which he pre
sented to me. In the interval of three years, between 1857
and 1860, the ledge of rock, /, on which the cave opened,
and which was originally twenty feet wide, had been almost
entirely quarried away, and, at the rate at which the work
of dilapidation was proceeding, its complete destruction
seemed near at hand.
In the limestone are many fissures, one of which, still
partially filled with mud and stones, is represented in the
section at a c as continuous from the cave to the upper
CHAP. v. NEANDERTHAL SKELETON. 77
surface of the country. Through this passage the loam,
and possibly the human body to which the bones belonged,
may have been washed into the cave below. The loam,
which covered the uneven bottom of the cave, was sparingly
mixed with rounded fragments of chert, and was very similar
in composition to that covering the general surface of that
region.
There was no crust of stalagmite overlying the mud in
which the human skeleton was found, and no bones of other
animals in the mud with the skeleton ; but just before our
visit in 1860 the tusk of a bear had been met with in some
mud in a lateral embranchment of the cave, in a situation
precisely similar to 6, fig. 1, and on a level corresponding
with that of the human skeleton. This tusk, shown us by
the proprietor of the cave, was two and a half inches long and
quite perfect ; but whether it was referable to a recent or
extinct species of bear, I could not determine.
From a printed letter of Dr. Fuhlrott we learn that on
removing the loam, which was five feet thick, from the cave,
the human skull was first noticed near the entrance, and,
further in, the other bones lying in the same horizontal
plane. It is supposed that the skeleton was complete, but
the workmen, ignorant of its value, scattered and lost most
of the bones, preserving only the larger ones.*
The cranium, which Dr. Fuhlrott showed me, was covered
both on its outer and inner surface, and especially on the
latter, with a profusion of dendritical crystallisations, and
some other bones of the skeleton were ornamented in the
same way. These markings, as Dr. Hermann von Meyer
observes, afford no sure criterion of antiquity, for they have
been observed on Eoman bones. Nevertheless, they are
more common in bones that have been long embedded in
* Letter to Professor Schaaffhausen, cited Natural History Keview, No. 2,
p. 156.
78 NEANDERTHAL SKULL. CHAP. v.
the earth. The skull and bones, moreover, of the Neander
thal skeleton had lost so much of their animal matter as
to adhere strongly to the tongue, agreeing in this respect
with the ordinary condition of fossil remains of the post-
pliocene period. On the whole, I think it probable that this
fossil may be of about the same age as those found by
Schmerling in the Liege caverns ; but, as no other animal
remains were found with it, there is no proof that it may not
be newer. Its position lends no countenance whatever to the
supposition of its being more ancient.
When the skull and other parts of the skeleton were
first exhibited at a German scientific meeting at Bonn, in
1857, some doubts were expressed by several naturalists,
whether it was truly human. Professor Schaaffhausen,
who, with the other experienced zoologists, did not share
these doubts, observed that the cranium, which included
the frontal bone, both parietals, part of the squamous, and
the upper third of the occipital, was of unusual size and
thickness, the forehead narrow and very low, and the pro
jection of the supra-orbital ridges enormously great. He
also stated that the absolute and relative length of the thigh
bone, humerus, radius, and ulna, agreed well with the di
mensions of a European individual of like stature at the
present day ; but that the thickness of the bones was very
extraordinary, and the elevation and depression for the at
tachment of muscles were developed in an unusual degree.
Some of the ribs, also, were of a singularly rounded shape
and abrupt curvature, which was supposed to indicate great
power in the thoracic muscles.*
In the same memoir, the Prussian anatomist remarks that
the depression of the forehead, see fig. 3, p. 82, is not due
to any artificial flattening, such as is practised in various
* Professor Schaaffhausen' s Memoir, translated, Natural History Eeview,
No. 2, April 1861.
CHAP. v. SKULL OF ENGIS, NEAR LIEGE. 79
modes by barbarous nations in the Old and New World,
the skull being quite symmetrical, and showing no indication
of counter-pressure at the occiput; whereas, according to
Morton, in the Flat-heads of the Columbift, the frontal and
parietal bones are always unsymmetrical.* On the whole,
Professor SchaafThausen concluded that the individual to
whom the Neanderthal skull belonged must have been dis
tinguished by small cerebral development, and uncommon
strength of corporeal frame.
When on my return to England I showed the cast of the
cranium to Professor Huxley, he remarked at once that it
was the most ape-like skull he had ever beheld. Mr. Busk,
after giving a translation of Professor Schaaff hausen's me
moir in the Natural History Review, f added some valuable
comments of his own on the characters in which this skull
approached that of the gorilla and chimpanzee.
Professor Huxley afterwards studied the cast with the
object of assisting me to give illustrations of it in this work,
and in doing so discovered what had not previously been
observed, that it was quite as abnormal in the shape of its
occipital as in that of its frontal or superciliary region.
Before citing his words on the subject, I will offer a few
remarks on the Engis skull which the same anatomist has
compared with that of the Neanderthal.
Fossil Skull of the Engis Cave near Liege.
Among six or seven human skeletons, portions of which
were collected by Dr. Schmerling from three or four caverns
near Liege, embedded in the same matrix with the remains of
the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, hyaena, and other extinct qua
drupeds, the most perfect skull, as I have before stated, p. 65,
was that of an adult individual found in the cavern of Engis.
* Natural History Eeview, No. 2, p. 160. t No. 2, 1861.
80 SKULL OF ENGIS, NEAR Ll GE. CHAP. V.
This skull, Dr. Schmerling figured in his work, observing
that it was too imperfect to enable the anatomist to deter
mine the facial angle, but that one might infer, from the
narrowness of tbe frontal portion, that it belonged to an in
dividual of small intellectual development. He speculated
on its Ethiopian affinities, but not confidently, observing
truly that it would require many more specimens to enable
an anatomist to arrive at sound conclusions on such a point.
M. Greoffroy St. Hilaire and other osteologists, who examined
the specimen, denied that it resembled a negro's skull. When
I saw the original in the museum at Liege, I invited Dr.
Spring, one of the professors of the university, to whom we
are indebted for a valuable memoir on the human bones
found in the cavern of Chauvaux near Namur, to have a
cast made of this Engis skull. He not only had the kind
ness to comply with my request, but rendered a service to
the scientific world by adding to the original cranium
several detached fragments which Dr. Schmerling had ob
tained from Engis, and which were found to fit in exactly,
so that the cast represented at fig. 2 is more complete than
that given in the first plate of Schmerling's work. It exhibits
on the right side the position of the auditory foramen (see
fig. 6, p. 88), which was not included in Schmerling's figure.
Mr. Busk, when he saw this cast, remarked to me that,
although forehead was, as Schmerling had truly stated, some
what narrow, it might nevertheless be matched by the skulls
of individuals of European race, an observation since fully
borne out by measurements, as will be seen in the sequel.
OBSERVATIONS BY PROFESSOR HUXLEY ON THE HUMAN SKULLS
OF ENGIS AND THE NEANDERTHAL.
' The Engis skull, as originally figured by Professor Schmerling,
was in a very imperfect state ; but other fragments have since been
added to it by the care of Dr. Spring, and the cast upon which my
CHAP. V.
SKULL OF EflGIS, NEAR LI^GE.
81
observations are based (fig. 2) exhibits the frontal, parietal, and
occipital regions, as far as the middle of the occipital foramen, with
the squamous and mastoid portions of the right temporal bone
entire, or nearly so, while the left temporal bone is wanting. From
the middle of the occipital foramen to the middle of the roof of each
orbit, the base of the skull is destroyed, and the facial bones are
entirely absent.
Fig. 2
i
Side view of the cast of part of a human skull found by Dr. Schmerling
embedded amongst the remains of extinct mammalia in the cave of Engis, near
Liege.
a Superciliary ridge and glabella.
b Coronal suture.
c The apex of the lambdoidal suture.
d The occipital protuberance.
' The extreme length of the skull is 7'7 inches, and as its extreme
breadth is not more than 5' 25, its form is decidedly dolichocephalic.
At the same time its height (4| inches from the plane of the
glabello-occipital line (a d) to the vertex) is good, and the forehead
is well arched ; so that while the horizontal circumference of the
skull is about 20^- inches, the longitudinal arc from the nasal spine of
G
82
NEANDERTHAL SKULL.
CHAP. V.
the frontal bone to the occipital protuberance (d~] measures about 13|
inches. The transverse arc from one auditory foramen to the other
across the middle of the sagittal suture measures about 13 inches.
The sagittal suture (b c) is 5-J inches in length. The superciliary
prominences are well, but not excessively, developed, and are sepa
rated by a median depression in the region of the glabella. They
indicate large frontal sinuses. If a line joining the glabella and
the occipital protuberance (a d) be made horizontal, no part of the
occiput projects more than y^th of an inch behind the posterior ex
tremity of that line ; and the upper edge of the auditory foramen
is almost in contact with the same line, or rather with one drawn
parallel to it on the outer surface of the skull.
Fig. 3
Side view of the cast of a part of a human skull from a cave in the Neanderthal
near Diisseldorf.
a The superciliary ridge and glabella.
b The coronal suture.
c The apex of the lambdoidal suture.
d The occipital protuberance.
' The Neanderthal skull, with which also I am acquainted only by
means of Professor Schaaffhausen's drawings of an excellent cast and
of photographs, is so extremely different in appearance from the Engis
cranium, that it might well be supposed to belong to a distinct race
of mankind. It is 8 inches in extreme length and 5*75 inches in
CHAP. V.
NEANDERTHAL SKULL.
83
extreme breadth, but only measures 3 '4 inches from the glabello-
occipital line to the vertex. The longitudinal arc, measured as
above, is 12 inches; the transverse arc cannot be exactly ascer
tained, in consequence of the absence of the temporal bones, but
was probably about the same, and certainly exceeded 10| inches.
The horizontal circumference is 23 inches. This great circum
ference arises largely from the vast development of the super
ciliary ridges, which are occupied by great frontal sinuses whose
inferior apertures are displayed exceedingly well in one of Dr.
Fig. 4
Outline of the skull of an adult Chimpanzee, of that from the Neanderthal,
and of that of a European, drawn to the same absolute size, in order better to
exhibit their relative differences. The superciliary region of the Neanderthal
skull appears less prominent than in fig. 3, as the contours are all taken along
the middle line where the superciliary projection of the Neanderthal skull is
least marked,
a The glabella.
b The occipital protuberance, or the point on the exterior of each skull
which corresponds roughly with the attachment of the tentorium,
or with the inferior boundary of the posterior cerebral lobes.
Fuhlrott's photographs, and form a continuous transverse prominence,
somewhat excavated in the middle line, across the lower part of the
brows. In consequence of this structure, the forehead appears still
lower and more retreating than it really is. To an anatomical eye
the posterior part of the skull is even more striking than the an
terior. The occipital protuberance occupies the extreme posterior
end of the skull when the glabello-occipital line is made horizontal,
G 2
84 NEANDERTHAL SKULL. CHAP. v.
and so far from any part of the occipital region extending beyond
it, this region of the skull slopes obliquely upward and forward, so
that the lambdoidal suture is situated well upon the upper surface
of the cranium. At the same time, notwithstanding the great length
of the skull, the sagittal suture is remarkably short (41 inches), and
the squamosal suture is very straight.
* In human skulls, the superior curved ridge of the occipital bone
and the occipital protuberance correspond, approximative^, with
the level of the tentorium and with the lateral sinuses, and con
sequently with the inferior limit of the posterior lobes of the brain.
At first, I found some difficulty in believing that a human brain
could have its posterior lobes so flattened and diminished as must
have been the case in the Neanderthal man, supposing the ordi
nary relation to obtain between the superior occipital ridges and the
tentorium; but on my application, through Sir Charles Lyell,
Dr. Fuhlrott, the possessor of the skull, was good enough not only to
ascertain the existence of the lateral sinuses in their ordinary posi
tion, but to send convincing proofs of the fact, in excellent photo
graphic views of the interior of the skull, exhibiting clear indications
of these sinuses.
' There can be no doubt that, as Professor Schaaffhausen and
Mr. Busk have stated, this skull is the most brutal of all known
human skulls, resembling those of the apes not only in the prodigious
development of the superciliary prominences and the forward ex
tension of the orbits, but still more in the depressed form of the
brain-case, in the straightness of the squamosal suture, and in
the complete retreat of the occiput forward and upward, from the
superior occipital ridges.
' But the cranium, in its present condition, is stated by Professor
Schaaffhausen to contain 1033'24 cubic centimeters of water, or, in
other words, about 63 English cubic inches. As the entire skull could
hardly have held less than 12 cubic inches more, its minimum
capacity may be estimated at 75 cubic inches. The most capacious
healthy European skull yet measured had a capacity of 114 cubic
inches, the smallest (as estimated by weight of brain) about 55
cubic inches, while, according to Professor Schaaffhausen, some
Hindoo skulls have as small a capacity as about 46 cubic inches
(27 oz. of water). The largest cranium of any Gorilla yet measured
contained 34' 5 cubic inches. The Neanderthal cranium stands,
therefore, in capacity, very nearly on a level with the mean of the
two human extremes, and very far above the pithecoid maximum.
( Hence, even in the absence of the bones of the arm and thigh,
CHAP. v. BORREBY SKULL. 85
which, according to Professor Schaaffhausen, had the precise propor
tions found in man, although they were much stouter than ordinary-
human bones, there could be no reason for ascribing this cranium
to anything but a man ; while the strength and development of the
muscular ridges of the limb-bones are characters in perfect accord
ance with those exhibited, in a minor degree, by the bones of such
hardy savages, exposed to a rigorous climate, as the Patagonians.
1 The Neanderthal cranium has certainly not undergone compression,
and, in reply to the suggestion that the skull is that of an idiot, it
may be urged that the onus probandi lies with those who adopt the
hypothesis. Idiotcy is compatible with very various forms and ca
pacities of the cranium, but I know of none which present the least
resemblance to the Neanderthal skull ; and, furthermore, I shall pro
ceed to show that the latter manifests but an extreme degree of a
stage of degradation exhibited, as a natural condition, by the crania
of certain races of mankind.
* Mr. Busk drew my attention, some time ago, to the resemblance
between some of the skulls taken from tumuli of the stone period at
Borreby in Denmark, of which Mr. Busk possesses numerous accurate
figures, and the Neanderthal cranium. One of the Borreby skulls
in particular (fig. 5, p. 86) has remarkably projecting superciliary
ridges, a retreating forehead, a low flattened vertex, and an occiput
which shelves upward and forward. But the skull is relatively higher
and broader, or more brachycephalic, the sagittal suture longer,
and the superciliary ridges less projecting, than in the Neanderthal
skull. Nevertheless, there is, without doubt, much resemblance in
character between the two skulls, a circumstance which is the
more interesting, since the other Borreby skulls have better fore
heads and less prominent superciliary ridges, and exhibit altogether
a higher conformation.
; The Borreby skulls belong to the stone period of Denmark, and
the people to whom they appertained were probably either contem
poraneous with, or later than, the makers of the " refuse-heaps " of
that country. In other words, they were subsequent to the last great
physical changes of Europe, and were contemporaries of the urus
and bison, not of the Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and
Hyaena spelcea.
' Supposing for a moment, what is not proven, that the Neanderthal
skull belonged to a race allied to the Borreby people and was as
modern as they, it would be separated by as great a distance of time
as of anatomical character from the Engis skull, and the possibility of
its belonging to a distinct race from the latter might reasonably
appear to be greatly heightened.
80
BORREBY SKULL.
CHAP. V.
' To prevent the possibility of reasoning in a vicious circle, how
ever, I thought it would be well to endeavour to ascertain what
amount of cranial variation is to be found in a pure race at the present
Fig. 5
Skull associated with ground flint implements, from a tumulus at Borreby in
Denmark, after a camera lucida drawing by Mr. Gr. Busk, F.K.S. The thick
dark line indicates so much of the skull as corresponds with the fragment from
the Neanderthal.
a Superciliary ridge, c The apex of the lambdoidal suture.
b Coronal suture. d The occipital protuberance.
e The auditory foramen.
CHAP. v. ENGIS AND AUSTRALIAN SKULLS COMPARED.
87
day ; and as the natives of Southern and Western Australia are
probably as pure and homogeneous in blood, customs, and language,
as any race of savages in existence, I turned to them, the more
readily as the Hunterian museum contains a very fine collection of
such skulls.
' I soon found it possible to select from among these crania two (con
nected by all sorts of intermediate gradations), the one of which should
very nearly resemble the Engis skull, while the other should some
what less closely approximate the Neanderthal cranium in form, size,
and proportions. And at the same time others of these skulls pre
sented no less remarkable affinities with the low type of Borreby
skull.
' That the resemblances to which I allude are by no means of a
merely superficial character, is shown by the accompanying diagram
(fig. 6, p. 88), which gives the contours of the two ancient and of
one of the Australian skulls, and by the following table of measure
ments.
A
B
C
D
E
F
Engis
20
13f
12
43
7f
5 ?
Australian, No. 1
201
13
12
4-
71
5
Australian, No. 2
22
12
10f
3
7-9
5|
Neanderthal
23
12
10
3f
8
^4
A The horizontal circumference in the plane of a line joining the glabella,
with the occipital protuberance.
B The longitudinal arc from the nasal depression along the middle line of
the skull to the occipital tuberosity.
c From the level of the glabello-occipital line on each side, across the
middle of the sagittal suture to the same point on the opposite side.
D The vertical height from the glabello-occipital line.
E The extreme longitudinal measurement.
F The extreme transverse measurement.*
' The question whether the Engis skull has rather the character of
one of the high races or of one of the lower has been much disputed,
but the following measurements of an English skull, noted in the cata
logue of the Hunterian museum as typically Caucasian (see fig. 4)
will serve to show that both sides may be right, and that cranial
measurements alone afford no safe indication of race.
* I have taken the glabello-occipital
line as a base in these measurements,
simply because it enables me to com
pare all the skulls, whether fragments
or entire, together. The greatest cir
cumference of the English skull lies
in a plane considerably above that of
the glabello-occipital line, and amounts
to twenty-two inches.
83
ENGIS AND NEANDERTHAL SKULLS.
CHAP. v.
English .
A
21
B
13}
C
12*
7
* In making the preceding statement, it must be clearly understood
that I neither desire to affirm that the Engis and Neanderthal skulls
belong to the Australian race, nor to assert even that the ancient
Fig. 6
Outlines of the skull from the Neanderthal, of an Australian skull from Port
Adelaide, and of the skull from the Cave of Engis, drawn to the same absolute
length, in order the better to contrast their proportions.
a b As in figure 4, p. 80.
e The position of the auditory foramen of the Engis skull.
skulls belong to one and the same race, so far as race is measured by
language, colour of skin, or character of hair. Against the con
clusion that they are of the same race as the Australians various
minor anatomical differences of the ancient skulls, such as the great
development of the frontal sinuses, might be urged ; while against
the supposition of either the identity, or the diversity, of race of the
two arises the known independence of the variation of cranium on
the one hand, and of hair, colour, and language on the other.
' But the amount of variation of the Borreby skulls, and the fact
that the skulls of one of the purest and most homogeneous of existing
races of men can be proved to differ from one another in the same
characters, though perhaps not quite to the same extent, as the Engis
CHAP. v. COMPARISON OF HUMAN AND SIMIAN SKULLS. 89
and Neanderthal skulls, seem to me to prohibit any cautious reasoner
from affirming the latter to have been necessarily of distinct races.
' The marked resemblances between the ancient skulls and their
modern Australian analogues, however, have a profound interest,
when it is recollected that the stone axe is as much the weapon and
the implement of the modern as of the ancient savage; that the
former turns the bones of the kangaroo and of the emu to the same
account as the latter did the bones of the deer and the urus ; that
the Australian heaps up the shells of devoured shellfish in mounds
which represent the " refuse-heaps" or " Kjokkenmb'ddings," of Den
mark ; and, finally, that, on the other side of Torres Straits, a race
akin to the Australians are among the few people who now build
their houses on pile-works, like those of the ancient Swiss lakes.
' That this amount of resemblance in habit and in the conditions of
existence is accompanied by as close a resemblance in cranial con
figuration, illustrates on a great scale that what Ciivier demonstrated
of the animals of the Nile valley is no less true of men ; circum
stances remaining similar, the savage varies little more, it would
seem, than the ibis or the crocodile, especially if we take into ac
count the enormous extent of the time over which our knowledge of
man now extends, as compared with that measured by the duration
of the sepulchres of Egypt.
k Finally, the comparatively large cranial capacity of the Neander
thal skull, overlaid though it may be by pithecoid bony walls, and
the completely human proportions of the accompanying limb-bones,
together with the very fair development of the Engis skull, clearly
indicate that the first traces of the primordial stock whence man has
proceeded need no longer be sought, by those who entertain any form
of the doctrine of progressive development, in the newest tertiaries ;
but that they may be looked for in an epoch more distant from the
age of the Elephas primigenius than that is from us.'
The two skulls which form the subject of the preceding
comments and illustrations have given rise to nearly an
equal amount of surprise for opposite reasons ; that of Engis
because being so unequivocally ancient, it approached so
near to the highest or Caucasian type ; that of the Neander
thal, because, having no such decided claims to antiquity, it
departs so widely from the normal standard of humanity.
90 COMPARISON OF THE CHAP. v.
Professor Huxley's observation regarding the wide range of
variation, both as to shape and capacity, in the skulls of so
pure a race as the native Australian, removes to no small
extent this supposed anomaly, assuming what though not
proved is very probable, that both varieties coexisted in the
post-pliocene period in Western Europe.
As to the Engis skull, we must remember that although
associated with the elephant, rhinoceros, bear, tiger, and
hyaena, all of extinct species, it nevertheless is also accom
panied by a bear, stag, wolf, fox, beaver, and many other
quadrupeds of species still living. Indeed many eminent
palaeontologists, and among them Professor Pictet, think that,
numerically considered, the larger portion of the mammalian
fauna agrees specifically with that of our own period, so that
we are scarcely entitled to feel surprised if we find human
races of the post-pliocene epoch undistinguishable from some
living ones. It would merely tend to show that man has
been as constant in his osteological characters as many other
mammalia now his contemporaries. The expectation of
always meeting with a lower type of human skull, the older
the formation in which it occurs, is based on the theory of
progressive development, and it may prove to be sound ;
nevertheless we must remember that as yet we have no dis
tinct geological evidence that the appearance of what are
called the inferior races of mankind has always preceded in
chronological order that of the higher races.
It is now admitted that the differences between the brain
of the highest races of man and that of the lowest, though
less in degree, are of the same order as those which separate
the human from the simian brain;* and the same rule
holds good in regard to the shape of the skull. The average
Negro skull differs from that of the European in having a
* Natural History Keview, 1861, p. 8.
CHAP. v. HUMAN AND SIMIAN BRAINS. 91
more receding forehead, more prominent superciliary ridges,
and more largely developed prominences and furrows for
the attachment of muscles ; the face also, and its lines, are
larger proportionally. The brain is somewhat less voluminous
on the average in the lower races of mankind, its convolu
tions rather less complicated, and those of the two hemi
spheres more symmetrical, in all which points an approach
is made to the simian type. It will also be seen, by reference
to the late Dr. Morton's works, and by the foregoing state
ments of Professor Huxley, that the range of capacity between
the highest and lowest human brain is far greater than that
between the highest simian and lowest human brain; but
the Neanderthal skull, although in several respects it is more
ape-like than any human skull previously discovered, is, in
regard to capacity, by no means contemptible.
Eminent anatomists have shown that in the average pro
portions of some of the bones the Negro differs from the
European, and that in most of these characters, he makes a
slightly nearer approach to the anthropoid quadrumana;*
but Professor Schaaffhausen has pointed out that in these
* ' The inferior races of mankind relatively, a little longer ; the foot is
exhibit proportions which are in many an eighth, and the hand a twelfth
respects intermediate between the longer than in the European. It is
higher, or European, orders, and the well known that the foot is less well
monkeys. In the Negro, for instance, formed in the Negro than in the
the stature is less than in the Euro- European. The arch of the instep,
pean. The cranium, as is well known, the perfect conformation of which is
bears a small proportion to the face. essential to steadiness and ease of
Of the extremities the upper are pro- gait, is less elevated in the former
portionately longer, and there is, in than in the latter. The foot is
both upper and lower, a less marked thereby rendered flatter as well as
preponderance of the proximal over the longer, more nearly resembling the
distal segments. For instance, in the monkey's, between which and the
Negro, the thigh and arm are rather European, there is a marked differ-
shorter than in the European ; the leg ence in this particular.' From ' A
is actually of equal length in both Treatise on the Human Skeleton' by
races, and is therefore, relatively, a Dr. Humphry, Lecturer on Surgery
little longer in the Negro ; the fore-arm and Anatomy in the Cambridge Uni-
in the latter is actually, as well as versity Medical School, p. 91
92 COMPAEISON OF THE HUMAN AND SIMIAN BRAINS. CHAP. v.
proportions the Neanderthal skeleton does not differ from
the ordinary standard, so that the skeleton by no means
indicates a transition between Homo and Pithecus.
There is doubtless, as shown in the diagram fig. 4, a
nearer resemblance in the outline of the Neanderthal skull
to that of a chimpanzee than had ever been observed before
in any human cranium ; and Professor Huxley's description
of the occipital region shows that the resemblance is not
confined to the mere excessive prominence of the superciliary
ridges.
The direct bearing of the ape-like character of the Nean
derthal skull on Lamarck's doctrine of progressive develop
ment and transmutation, or on that modification of it which
has of late been so ably advocated by Mr. Darwin, consists
in this, that the newly observed deviation from a normal
standard of human structure is not in a casual or random
direction, but just what might have been anticipated if the
laws of variation were such as the transmutationists require.
For if we conceive the cranium to be very ancient, it exem
plifies a less advanced stage of progressive development
and improvement. If it be a comparatively modern race,
owing its peculiarities of conformation to degeneracy, it is
an illustration of what the botanists have called ' atavism,'
or the tendency of varieties to revert to an ancestral type,
which type, in proportion to its antiquity, would be of lower
grade. To this hypothesis, of a genealogical connection
between man and the lower animals, I shall again allude
in the concluding chapters.
CHAP. VI. POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM. 93
CHAPTEK VI.
POST-PLIOCENE ALLUYIUM AND CAYE DEPOSITS WITH
FLINT IMPLEMENTS.
GENERAL POSITION OF DRIFT WITH EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN VALLEYS
DISCOVERIES OF M. BOUCHER DE PERTHES AT ABBEVILLE FLINT
IMPLEMENTS FOUND ALSO AT ST. ACHEUL, NEAR AMIENS CURIOSITY
AWAKENED BY THE SYSTEMATIC EXPLORATION OF THE BRIXHAM CAVE
FLINT KNIVES IN SAME, WITH BONES OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA SUPER
POSITION OF DEPOSITS IN THE CAVE VISITS OF ENGLISH AND FRENCH
GEOLOGISTS TO ABBEVILLE AND AMIENS.
Post-pliocene Alluvium containing Flint Implements in
the Valley of the Somme.
mHRpUGrHOUT a large part of Europe we find at mode-
-L rate elevations above the present river-channels, usually
at a height of less than forty feet but sometimes much
higher, beds of gravel, sand, and loam containing bones of
the elephant, rhinoceros, horse, ox, and other quadrupeds,
some of extinct, others of living, species, belonging for the
most part to the fauna already alluded to in the last chapter
as characteristic of the interior of caverns. The greater part
of these deposits contain fluviatile shells, and have un
doubtedly been accumulated in ancient river-beds. These
old channels have long since been dry, the streams which
once flowed in them having shifted their position, deepening
the valleys, and often widening them on one side.
It has naturally been asked, if man coexisted with the
extinct species of the caves, why were his remains and the
works of his hands never embedded outside the caves in
ancient river-gravel containing the same fossil fauna ? Why
should it be necessary for the geologist to resort for evidence
94 POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF THE SOMME. CHAP. vi.
of the antiquity of our race to the dark recesses of under
ground vaults and tunnels, which may have served as places
of refuge or sepulture to a succession of human beings and
wild animals, and where floods may have confounded to
gether in one breccia the memorials of the fauna of more
than one epoch ? Why do we not meet with a similar as
semblage of the relics of man, and of living and extinct
quadrupeds, in places where the strata can be thoroughly
scrutinised in the light of day ?
Recent researches have at length demonstrated that such
memorials, so long sought for in vain, do in fact exist, and
their recognition is the chief cause of the more favourable
reception now given to the conclusions which MM. Tournal,
Christol, Schmerling, and others, arrived at thirty years ago
respecting the fossil contents of caverns.
The first great step in this new direction was made
thirteen years after the publication of Schmerling's ( Re
searches,' by M. Boucher de Perthes, who found in ancient
alluvium at Abbeville, in Picardy, some flint implements,
the relative antiquity of which was attested by their geologi
cal position. The antiquarian knowledge of their discoverer
enabled him to recognise in their rude and peculiar type a
character distinct from that of the polished stone weapons
of a later period, usually called * celts.' In the first
volume of his f Antiquites Celtiques,' published in 1847,
M. Boucher de Perthes styled these older tools ( antedilu
vian,' because they came from the lowest beds of a series of
ancient alluvial strata bordering the valley of the Somme,
which geologists had termed ' diluvium.' He had begun to
collect these implements in 1841, from which time they had
been dug out of the drift or deposits of gravel and sand
whenever excavations were made in repairing the fortifica
tions of Abbeville ; or annually, as often as flints were wanted
for the roads, or loam for making bricks. Fine sections,
CHAP. vi. DISCOVERIES OF M. BOUCHER DE PERTHES. 95
therefore, were laid open, from twenty to thirty-five feet in
depth, and the bones of quadrupeds of the genera elephant,
rhinoceros, bear, hysena, stag, ox, horse, and others, were
found, and had been sent from time to time to Paris to be
examined and named by Cuvier, who described them in his
' Ossements Fossiles.' A correct account of the associated
flint tools and of their position was given in 1847 by
M. Boucher de Perthes in his work above cited, and they
were stated to occur at various depths, often twenty or thirty
feet from the surface, in sand and gravel, especially in those
strata which were nearly in contact with the subjacent white
chalk. But the scientific world had no faith in the state
ment that works of art, however rude, had been met with in
undisturbed beds of such antiquity. Few geologists visited
Abbeville in winter, when the sand-pits were open, and when
they might have opportunities of verifying the sections, and
judging whether the instruments had really been embedded
by natural causes in the same strata with the bones of the
mammoth, rhinoceros, and other extinct mammalia. Some
of the tools figured in the e Antiquites Celtiques ' were so
rudely shaped, that many imagined them to have owed their
peculiar forms to accidental fracture in a river's bed ; others
suspected frauds on the part of the workmen, who might
have fabricated them for sale, or that the gravel had been
disturbed, and that the worked flints had got mingled with
the bones of the mammoth long after that animal and its
associates had disappeared from the earth.
No one was more sceptical than the late eminent physician
of Amiens, Dr. Eigollot, who had long before (in the year
1819) written a memoir on the fossil mammalia of the valley
of the Somme. He was at length induced to visit Abbe
ville, and, having inspected the collection of M. Boucher de
Perthes, returned home resolved to look for himself for flint
tools in the gravel-pits near Amiens. There, accordingly, at
90 EXPLORATIONS OF THE BRIXHAM CAVE. CHAP. vi.
a distance of about forty miles from Abbeville, he imme
diately found abundance of similar flint implements, precisely
the same in the rudeness of their make, and the same in their
geological position ; some of them in gravel nearly on a level
with the Somme, others in similar deposits resting on chalk at
a height of about ninety feet above the river.
Dr. Eigollot having in the course of four years obtained
several hundred specimens of these tools, most of them from
St. Acheul in the south-east suburbs of Amiens, lost no
time in communicating an account of them to the scientific
world, in a memoir illustrated by good figures of the worked
flints and careful sections of the beds. These sections were
executed by M. Buteux, an engineer well qualified for the
task, who had written a good description of the geology of Pi-
cardy. Dr. Eigollot, in this memoir, pointed out most clearly
that it was not in the vegetable soil, nor in the brick-earth with
land and fresh- water shells next below, but in the lower beds
of coarse flint-gravel, usually twelve, twenty, or twenty-five
feet below the surface, that the implements were met with, just
as they had been previously stated by M. Boucher de Perthes
to occur at Abbeville. The conclusion, therefore, which was
legitimately deduced from all the facts, was that the flint
tools and their fabricators were coeval with the extinct mam
malia embedded in the same strata.
Brixham Cave, near Torquay, Devonshire.
Four years after the appearance of Dr. Eigollot's paper, a
sudden change of opinion was brought about in England
respecting the probable coexistence, at a former period, of
man and many extinct mammalia, in consequence of the
results obtained from a careful exploration of a cave at
Brixham, near Torquay, in Devonshire. As the new views
very generally adopted by English geologists had no small
HAP. vi. EXPLORATIONS OF THE BRIXHAM CAVE. 97
influence on the subsequent progress of opinion in France,
I shall interrupt my account of the researches made in
the Valley of the Somme, by a brief notice of those which
were carried on in 1858 in Devonshire with more than
usual care and scientific method. Dr. Buckland, in his
celebrated work, entitled ( KeliquiaB Diluvianse,' published
in 1823, in which he treated of the organic remains con
tained in caves, fissures, and ' diluvial gravel ' in England,
had given a clear statement of the results of his own original
observations, and had declared that none of the human bones
or stone implements met with by him in any of the caverns
could be considered to be as old as the mammoth and other
extinct quadrupeds. Opinions in harmony with this con
clusion continued until very lately to be generally in vogue
in England ; although about the time that Schmerling was
exploring the Liege caves, the Eev. Mr. M'Enery, a Eoman
Catholic priest, residing near Torquay, had found in a cave
one mile east of that town, called ' Kent's Hole,' in red loam
covered with stalagmite, not only bones of the mammoth,
tichorhine rhinoceros, cave-bear, and other mammalia, but
several remarkable flint tools, some of which he supposed to
be of great antiquity, while there were also remains of man
in the same cave of a later date.*
About ten years afterwards, in a < Memoir on the Greology
of South Devon,' published in 1842 by the Geological Society
of London, f an able geologist, Mr. Grodwin-Austen, de
clared that he had obtained in the same cave (Kent's Hole)
* The MS. and plates prepared for ments of an antique type and the
a joint memoir on Kent's Hole, by bones of extinct animals. Two of
Mr. M'Enery and Dr. Buckland, have these implements from Kent's Hole,
recently been published by Mr. Vivian figured in Plate 12 of the posthumous
of Torquay, from which, as well as work above alluded to, approach
from some of the unprinted MS., I very closely in form and size to the
infer that Mr. M'Enery only refrained common Abbeville implements,
out of deference to Dr. Buckland from f Transactions of Geological So-
declaring his belief in the contempo- eiety, 2nd series, vol. vi. p. 444.
raneousness of certain flint imple-
98 EXPLORATIONS OF THE BRIXHAM CAYE. CHAP, vi.
works of man from undisturbed loam or clay, under stalag
mite, mingled with the remains of extinct animals, and that
all these must have been introduced e before the stalagmite
flooring had been formed.' He maintained that such facts
could not be explained away by the hypothesis of sepulture,
as in Dr. Buckland's well-known case of the human skeleton
of Paviland, because in the Devon cave the flint implements
were widely distributed through the loam, and lay beneath
the stalagmite.
As the osseous and other contents of Kent's Hole had, by
repeated diggings, been thrown into much confusion, it was
thought desirable in 1858, when the entrance of a new and
intact bone-cave was discovered at Brixham, three or four
miles west of Torquay, to have a thorough and systematic
examination made of it. The Eoyal Society made two
grants towards defraying the expenses,* and a committee of
geologists was charged with the investigations, among whom
Mr. Prestwich and Dr. Falconer took an active part, visiting
Torquay while the excavations were in progress under the
superintendence of Mr. Pengelly. The last-mentioned geo
logist had the kindness to conduct me through the sub
terranean galleries after they had been cleared out in 1859 ;
and I saw, in company with Dr. Falconer, the numerous
fossils which had been taken from the subterranean fissures
and tunnels, all labelled and numbered, with references to a
journal kept during the progress of the work, and in which
the geological position of every specimen was recorded with
scrupulous care.
The discovery of the existence of this suite of caverns near
the sea at Brixham was made accidentally by the roof of
one of them falling in. None of the five external openings
now exposed to view in steep cliffs or the sloping side of a
* When these grants failed, Miss quay, liberally supplied the funds for
Burdett Coutts, then residing at Tor- completing the work.
CHAP. vi. EXPLORATIONS OF THE BRIXHAM CAYE. 99
valley were visible before the breccia and earthy matter
which blocked them up were removed during the late
exploration. According to a ground-plan drawn up by
Professor Kamsay, it appears that some of the passages
which run nearly north and south are fissures connected
with the vertical dislocation of the rocks, while another set,
running nearly east and west, are tunnels, which have the
appearance of having been to a great extent hollowed out by
the action of running water. The central or main entrance,
leading to what is called the f reindeer gallery,' because a
perfect antler of that animal was found sticking in the
stalagmitic floor, is ninety-five feet above the level of the
sea, being also about sixty above the bottom of the adjoining
valley. The united length of the five galleries which were
cleared out amounted to several hundred feet. Their width
never exceeded eight feet. They were sometimes filled up
to the roof with gravel, bones, and mud, but occasionally
there was a considerable space between the roof and floor.
The latter, in the case of the fissure-caves, was covered with
stalagmite, but in the tunnels it was usually free from any
such incrustation. The following was the general succession
of the deposits forming the contents of the underground
passages and channels :
1st. At the top, a layer of stalagmite varying in thick
ness from one to fifteen inches, which sometimes contained
bones, such as the reindeer's horn, already mentioned, and
an entire humerus of the cave-bear.
2ndly. Next below, loam or bone-earth, of an ochreous red
colour, from one foot to fifteen feet in thickness.
Srdly. At the bottom of all, gravel with many rounded
pebbles in it, probed in some places to the depth of twenty
feet without its being pierced through, and as it was barren
of fossils, left for the most part unremoved.
The mammalia obtained from the bone-earth consisted of
100 FLINT KNIVES IN BEIXHAM CAYE. CHAP. VI.
Elephas primigenius, or mammoth ; Rhinoceros tichorhinus ;
Ursus spelceus ; Hycena spelcea ; Felis spelcea, or the cave-
lion ; Cervus Tarandus, or the reindeer ; a species of horse,
ox, and several rodents, and others not yet determined.
No human bones were obtained anywhere during these
excavations, but many flint knives, chiefly from the lowest
part of the bone-earth ; and one of the most perfect lay at
the depth of thirteen feet from the surface, and was covered
with bone-earth of that thickness. From a similar position
was taken one of those siliceous nuclei, or cores, from which
flint flakes had been struck off on every side. Neglecting
the less perfect specimens, some of which were met with
even in the lowest gravel, about fifteen knives, recognised
as artificially formed by the most experienced antiquaries,
were taken from the bone-earth, and usually from near the
bottom. Such knives, considered apart from the associated
mammalia, afford in themselves no safe criterion of antiquity,
as they might belong to any part of the age of stone, similar
tools being sometimes met with in tumuli posterior in date
to the era of the introduction of bronze. But the anteriority
of those at Brixham to the extinct animals is demonstrated
not only by the occurrence at one point in overlying stalagmite
of the bone of a cave-bear, but also by the discovery at the
same level in the bone-earth, and in close proximity to a
very perfect flint tool, of the entire left hind-leg of a cave-
bear. This specimen, which was shown me by Dr. Falconer
and Mr. Pengelly, was exhumed from the earthy deposit in
the reindeer gallery, near its junction with the flint-knife
gallery, at the distance of about sixty-five feet from the main
entrance. The mass of earth containing it was removed
entire, and the matrix cleared away carefully by Dr. Fal
coner in the presence of Mr. Pengelly. Every bone was in
its natural place, the femur, tibia, fibula, ankle-bone, or
astragalus, all in juxta-position. Even the patella or de-
CHAP. vi. BRIXHAM CAVE DEPOSITS. 101
tached bone of the knee-pan was searched for, and not in
vain. Here, therefore, we have evidence of an entire limb
not having been washed in a fossil state out of an older
alluvium, and then swept afterwards into a cave, so as to be
mingled with flint implements, but having been introduced
when clothed with its flesh, or at least when it had the
separate bones bound together by their natural ligaments,
and in that state buried in mud.
If they were not all of contemporary date, it is clear from
this case, and from the humerus of the Ursus spelceus,
before cited, as found in a floor of stalagmite, that the bear
lived after the flint tools were manufactured, or in other
words, that man in this district preceded the cave-bear.
A glance at the position of the Brixham limestone con
taining the ossiferous caverns and fissures, and a brief survey
of the valleys which bound it on two sides, are enough to
satisfy a geologist that the drainage and geographical fea
tures of this region have undergone great changes since the
gravel and bone-earth were carried by streams into the sub
terranean cavities above described. Some worn pebbles of
hematite, in particular, can only have come from their
nearest parent rock, at a period when the valleys imme
diately adjoining the caves were much shallower than they
now are. The reddish loam in which the bones are em
bedded is such as may be seen on the surface of limestone in
the neighbourhood, but the currents which were formerly
charged with such mud must have run at a level sixty feet
above that of the stream now flowing in the same valley.
It was remarked by Mr. Pengelly, that the pebbles in the
gravel and the bones in the loam had their longer axes
parallel to the direction of the tunnels and fissures, showing
that they were deposited by the action of a stream.
It appears that so long as the flowing water had force
enough to propel stony fragments, no layer of fine mud could
102 INVESTIGATIONS MADE AT ABBEYILLE AND AMIENS. CHAP. vi.
accumulate, and so long as there was a regular current
capable of carrying in fine mud and bones, no superficial
crust of stalagmite. In some passages, as before stated, sta
lagmite was wanting, while in one place five alternations of
stalagmite and sand were observed, seeming to indicate a
prevalence of more rainy seasons, succeeded by others, when
the water was for a time too low to flood the area where the
calcareous incrustation accumulated.
If the regular sequence of the three deposits of pebbles,
mud, and stalagmite was the result of the causes above
explained, the order of superposition would be constant,
yet we could not be sure that the gravel in one passage
might not sometimes be coeval with the bone-earth or stalag
mite in another.
If therefore the flint knives had not been very widely
dispersed, and if one of them had not been at the bottom of
the bone-earth, close to the leg of the bear above described,
their antiquity relatively to the extinct mammalia might
have been questioned. No coprolites were found in the
Brixham excavations, and very few gnawed bones. These
few may have been brought from some distance, before they
reached their place of rest. Upon the whole, the same con
clusion which Dr. Schmerling came to, respecting the filling
up of the caverns near Liege, seems applicable to the caves of
Brixham.
Dr. Falconer, after aiding in the investigations above al
luded to near Torquay, stopped at Abbeville on his way to
Sicily, in the autumn of 1858, and saw there the collection of
M. Boucher de Perthes. Being at once satisfied that the flints
called hatchets had really been fashioned by the hand of man,
he urged Mr. Prestwich, by letter, thoroughly to explore the
geology of the Valley of the Somme. This he accordingly
accomplished, in company with Mr. John Evans, of the
Society of Antiquaries, and, before his return that same year,
CHAP. vi. INVESTIGATIONS MADE AT ABBEVILLE AND AMIENS. 103
succeeded in dissipating all doubts from the minds of his geo
logical friends by extracting, with his own hands, from a bed of
undisturbed gravel, at St. Acheul, a well-shaped flint hatchet.
This implement was buried in the gravel at a depth of seven
teen feet from the surface, and was lying on its flat side.
There were no signs of vertical rents in the enveloping matrix,
nor in the overlying beds of sand and loam, in which were many
land and fresh-water shells ; so that it was impossible, to ima
gine that the tool had gradually worked its way downwards,
as some had suggested, through the incumbent soil, into an
older formation.*
There was no one in England whose authority deserved to
have more weight in overcoming incredulity in regard to
the antiquity of the implements in question than that of
Mr. Prestwich, since, besides having published a series of
important memoirs on the tertiary formations of Europe, he
had devoted many years specially to the study of the drift
and its organic remains. His report, therefore, to the Eoyal
Society, accompanied by a photograph showing the position
of the flint tool in situ before it was removed from its
matrix, not only satisfied many inquirers, but induced others
to visit Abbeville and Amiens ; and one of these, Mr. Flower,
who accompanied Mr. Prestwich on his second excursion to
St. Acheul, in June 1859, succeeded, by digging into the
bank of gravel, in disinterring, at the depth of twenty-two
feet from the surface, a fine, symmetrically shaped weapon
of an oval form, tying in and beneath strata which were ob
served by many witnesses to be perfectly undisturbed.f
Shortly afterwards, in the year 1859, I visited the same
pits, and obtained seventy flint tools, one of which was taken
out while I was present, though I did not see it before it had
* Prestwich, Proceedings of the f Geological Quarterly Journal,
Royal Society, 1859, and Philoso- vol. xvi. p. 190.
phical Transactions, 1860.
104 INVESTIGATIONS MADE AT ABBEVILLE AND AMIENS. CHAP. vi.
fallen from the matrix. I expressed my opinion in favour of
the antiquity of the flint tools to the meeting of the British
Association at Aberdeen, in the same year.* On my way
through Eouen, I stated my convictions on this subject to
Mr. George Pouchet, who immediately betook himself to
St. Acheul, commissioned by the municipality of Eouen, and
did not quit the pits till he had seen one of the hatchets
extracted from gravel in its natural position, f
M. Gaudry also gave the foil owing account of his researches
in the same year to the Eoyal Academy of Sciences at Paris.
( The great point was not to leave the workmen for a single
instant, and to satisfy oneself by actual inspection, whether
the hatchets were found in situ. I caused a deep excavation
to be made, and found nine hatchets, most distinctly in situ
in the diluvium, associated with teeth of Equus fossilis and a
species of Bos, different from any now living, and similar to
that of the diluvium and of caverns.'J In 1859, M. Hebert,
an original observer of the highest authority, declared to the
Geological Society of France that he had, in 1854, or four
years before Mr. Prestwich's visit to St. Acheul, seen the
sections at Abbeville and Amiens, and had come to the
opinion that the hatchets were imbedded in the ' lower di
luvium,' and that their origin was as ancient as that of the
mammoth and the rhinoceros. M. Desnoyers also made
excavations after M. Gaudry, at St. Acheul, in 1859, with the
same results.
After a lively discussion on the subject in England and
France, it was remembered, not .only that there were nume
rous recorded cases leading to similar conclusions in regard to
cavern deposits, but, also, that Mr. Frere had, so long ago as
* See Proceedings of British Asso- | Comptes rendus, September 26th,
ciation for 1859. and October 3rd, 1859.
f Actes du Musee d'Histoire Natu- Bulletin, vol. xvii. p. 18.
relle de Eouen, 1860, p. 33.
CHAP. vi. INVESTIGATIONS MADE AT ABBEVILLE AND AMIENS. 105
1797, found flint weapons, of the same type as those of Amiens,
in a fresh-water formation in Suffolk, in conjunction with
elephant remains ; and nearly a hundred years earlier (1715),
another tool of the same kind had been exhumed from the
gravel of London, together with bones of an elephant ; to
all which examples I shall allude more fully in the sequel.
I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Pro
fessor Agassiz, 'that whenever a new and startling fact is
brought to light in science, people first say, " it is not true,"
then that " it is contrary to religion," and lastly, " that every
body knew it before." '
If I were considering merely the cultivators of geology, I
should say that the doctrine of the former co-existence of
man with many extinct mammalia had already gone through
these three phases in the progress of every scientific truth
towards acceptance. But the grounds of this belief have not
yet been fully laid before the general public, so as to enable
them fairly to weigh and appreciate the evidence. I shall
therefore do my best in the next three chapters to accomplish
this task.
106 GEOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SOMME YALLEY. CHAP. vn.
CHAPTER VII.
PEAT AND POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF THE YALLEY OF THE
SOMME.
GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME AND OF
THE SURROUNDING COUNTRY POSITION OF ALLUVIUM OF DIFFERENT
AGES PEAT NEAR ABBEVILLE ITS ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE CON
TENTS WORKS OF ART IN PEAT PROBABLE ANTIQUITY OF THE
PEAT, AND CHANGES OF LEVEL SINCE ITS GROWTH BEGAN FLINT
IMPLEMENTS OF ANTIQUE TYPE IN OLDER ALLUVIUM THEIR VARIOUS
FORMS AND GREAT NUMBERS.
Geological Structure of the Somme Valley.
rFHE Valley of the Somme in Picardy, alluded to in the last
J- chapter, is situated geologically in a region of white
chalk with flints, the strata of which are nearly horizontal.
The chalk hills which hound the valley are almost everywhere
between 200 and 300 feet in height. On ascending to that ele
vation, we find ourselves on an extensive table-land, in which
there are slight elevations and depressions. The white chalk
itself is scarcely ever exposed at the surface on this plateau,
although seen on the slopes of the hills, as at b and c (fig, 7 ).
The general surface of the upland region is covered continu
ously for miles in every direction by loam or brick-earth (No. 4),
about five feet thick, devoid of fossils. To the wide extent of
this loam the soil of Picardy chiefly owes its great fertility.
Here and there we also observe, on the chalk, outlying
patches of tertiary sand and clay (No. 5, fig. 7), with eocene
fossils, the remnants of a formation once more extensive, and
which probably once spread in one continuous mass over the
chalk, before the present system of valleys had begun to be
shaped out. It is necessary to allude to these relics of
CHAP. VII. GEOLOGICAL DESCRIPTION OP THE SOMME VALLEY. 107
tertiary strata, of which the larger part is missing, because
their denudation has contributed largely to furnish the
materials of gravels in which the flint implements and
bones of extinct mammalia are entombed. From this
source have been derived not only the regular-formed egg-
shaped pebbles, so common in the old fluviatile alluvium at
all levels, but those huge masses of hard sandstone, several
feet in diameter, to which I shall allude in the sequel. The
upland loam also (No. 4) has often, in no slight degree, been
formed at the expense of the same tertiary sands and clays, as
is attested by its becoming more or less sandy or argillaceous,
according to the nature of the nearest eocene outlier in the
neighbourhood.
Fig. 7
Section across the Valley of the Somme in Picardy.
1 Peat, twenty to thirty feet thick, resting on gravel, a.
2 Lower level gravel with elephants' bones and flint tools, covered
with fluviatile loam, twenty to forty feet thick.
3 Upper level gravel with similar fossils, and with overlying loam, in
all thirty feet thick.
4 Upland loam without shells (Limon des plateaux), five or six feet
thick.
5 Eocene tertiary strata, resting on the chalk in patches.
The average width of the Valley of the Somme between
Amiens and Abbeville is one mile. The height, therefore, of
the hills, in relation to the river-plain, could not be correctly
represented in the annexed diagram (fig. 7), the hills having
been reduced to one fourth of their altitude. It would other
wise have been necessary to make the space between c and b
four times as great. The dimensions also of the masses of
drift or alluvium, 2 and 3, have been exaggerated, in order to
render them sufficiently conspicuous ; for, all important as we
shall find them to be as geological monuments of the post-
pliocene period, they form a truly insignificant feature in the
108 PEAT OF THE VALLEY OF THE SOMME. CHAP. vn.
general structure of the country, so much so, that they might
easily be overlooked in a cursory survey of the district, and
are usually unnoticed in geological maps not specially devoted
to the superficial formations.
It will be seen by the description given of the section, fig. 7,
that No. 2 indicates the lower level gravels, and No. 3 the
higher ones, or those rising to elevations of eighty or a hundred
feet above the river. Newer than these is the peat No. 1, which
is from ten to thirty feet in thickness, and which is not only of
later date than the alluvium, 2 and 3, but is also posterior to
the denudation of those gravels, or to the time when the valley
was excavated through them. Underneath the peat is a bed
of gravel, a, from three to fourteen feet thick, which rests on
undisturbed chalk. This gravel was probably formed, in part
at least, when the valley was scooped out to its present
depth, since which time no geological change has taken place,
except the growth of the peat, and certain oscillations in the
general level of the country, to which we shall allude by and
by. A thin layer of impervious clay separates the gravel a from
the peat No. 1, and seems to have been a necessary pre
liminary to the growth of the peat.
Peat of the Valley of the Somme.
As hitherto, in our retrospective survey, we have been
obliged, for the sake of proceeding from the known to the
less known, to reverse the natural order of history, and to
treat of the newer before the older formations, I shall begin
my account of the geological monuments of the Valley of the
Somme by saying something of the most modern of all of
them, the peat. This substance occupies the lower parts of
the valley far above Amiens, and below Abbeville as far as
the sea. It has already been stated to be in some places thirty
feet thick, and is even occasionally more than thirty feet,
CHAP. vii. PEAT OF ABBEVILLE. 109
corresponding in that respect to the Danish mosses before de
scribed (Ch. II.). Like them, it belongs to the recent period ;
all the embedded mammalia, as well as the shells, being of
the same species as those now inhabiting Europe. The bones
of quadrupeds are very numerous, as I can bear witness,
having seen them brought up from a considerable depth near
Abbeville, almost as often as the dredging instrument was
used. Besides remains of the beaver, I was shown, in the col
lection of M. Boucher de Perthes, two perfect lower jaws with
teeth of the bear, Ursus Arctos ; and in the Paris Museum
there is another specimen, also from the Abbeville peat.
The list of mammalia already comprises a large proportion
of those proper to the Swiss lake-dwellings, and to the shell-
mounds and peat of Denmark ; but unfortunately as yet no
special study has been made of the French fauna, like that
by which the Danish and Swiss zoologists and botanists have
enabled us to compare the wild and tame animals and the
vegetation of the age of stone with that of the age of iron.
Notwithstanding the abundance of mammalian bones in
the peat, and the frequency of stone implements of the Celtic
and Gallo-Eoman periods, M. Boucher de Perthes has only
met with three or four fragments of human skeletons.
At some depth in certain places in the valley near Abbe
ville, the trunks of alders have been found standing erect as
they grew, with their roots fixed in an ancient soil, afterwards
covered with peat. Stems of the hazel, and nuts of the same,
abound ; trunks, also, of the oak and walnut. The peat
extends to the coast, and is there seen passing under the
sand-dunes and below the sea-level. At the mouth of the
river Canche, which joins the sea near the embouchure of
the Somme, yew trees, firs, oaks, and hazels have been dug
out of peat, which is there worked for fuel, and is about three
feet thick.* During great storms, large masses of compact
* D'Archiac, Hist, des Progres, vol. ii. p. 154.
110 PROBABLE ANTIQUITY OF PEAT. CHAP. vn.
peat, enclosing trunks of flattened trees, have been thrown
up on the coast at the mouth of the Somme; seeming to
indicate that there has been a subsidence of the land and a
consequent submergence of what was once a westward con
tinuation of the Valley of the Somme into what is now a
part of the British Channel, or La Manche.
Whether the vegetation of the lowest layers of peat differed
as to the geographical distribution of some of the trees from
the middle, and this from the uppermost peat, as in Denmark,
has not yet been ascertained ; nor have careful observations
been made with a view of calculating the minimum of time
which the accumulation of so dense a mass of vegetable matter
must have taken. A foot in thickness of highly compressed
peat, such as is sometimes reached in the bottom of the bogs,
is obviously the equivalent in time of a much greater thickness
of peat of spongy and loose texture, found near the surface.
The workmen who cut peat, or dredge it up from the bottom
of swamps and ponds, declare that in the course of their lives
none of the hollows which they have found, or caused by ex
tracting peat, have ever been refilled, even to a small extent.
They deny, therefore, that the peat grows. This, as M. Boucher
de Perthes observes, is a mistake ; but it implies that the
increase in one generation is not very appreciable by the
unscientific.
The antiquary finds near the surface Grallo-Eoman remains,
and still deeper Celtic weapons of the stone period. But the
depth at which Roman works of art occur varies in different
places, and is no sure test of age ; because in some parts of
the swamps, especially near the river, the peat is often so fluid
that heavy substances may sink through it, carried down by
their own gravity. In one case, however, M. Boucher de
Perthes observed several large flat dishes of Roman pottery,
lying in a horizontal position in the peat, the shape of
which must have prevented them from sinking or penetrating
CHAP. \ii. CHANGES OF LEVEL. Ill
through the underlying peat. Allowing about fourteen cen
turies for the growth of the superincumbent vegetable matter,
he calculated that the thickness gained in a hundred years
would be no more than three French centimetres.* This rate
of increase would demand so many tens of thousands of years
for the formation of the entire thickness of thirty feet, that
we must hesitate before adopting it as a chronometric scale.
Yet, by multiplying observations of this kind, and bringing
one to bear upon and check another, we may eventually suc
ceed in obtaining data for estimating the age of the peaty
deposit.
The rate of increase in Denmark may not be applicable to
France ; because differences in the humidity of the climate,
or in the intensity and duration of summer's heat and winter's
cold, as well as diversity in the species of plants which most
abound, would cause the peat to grow more or less rapidly,
not only when we compare two distinct countries in Europe,
but the same country at two successive periods.
I have already alluded to some facts which favour the idea
that there has been a change of level on the coast since the
peat began to grow. This conclusion seems confirmed by the
mere thickness of peat at Abbeville, and the occurrence of
alder and hazel-wood near the bottom of it. If thirty feet
of peat were now removed, the sea would flow up and fill the
valley for miles above Abbeville. Yet this vegetable matter
is all of submarine or fresh-water origin, for where aquatic
shells occur in it they are all of terrestrial or fluviatile kinds,
so that it must have grown above the sea-level when the
land was more elevated than now. We have already seen
what changes in the relative level of sea and land have oc
curred in Scotland subsequently to the time of the Eomans,
and are therefore prepared to meet with proofs of similar
movements in Picardy. In that country they have probably
* Antiquites Celtiques, vol. ii. p. 134.
112 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. CHAP. vir.
not been confined simply to subsidence, but have comprised
oscillations in the level of the land, by which marine shells
of the post-pliocene period have been raised some ten feet or
more above the level of the sea.
Small as is the progress hitherto made in interpreting the
pages of the peaty record, their importance in the Valley of
the Somme is enhanced by the reflection that, whatever be
the number of centuries to which they relate, they belong
to times posterior to the ancient implement-bearing beds,
which we are next to consider, and are even separated from
them, as we shall see, by an interval far greater than that
which divides the earliest strata of the peat from the latest.
Flint Implements of the Post-pliocene Period in the Valley
of the Somme.
The alluvium of the Valley of the Somme exhibits no
thing extraordinary or exceptional in its position or external
appearance, nor in the arrangement or composition of its
materials, nor in its organic remains ; in all these cha
racters it might be matched by the drift of a hundred other
valleys in France or England. Its claim to our peculiar
attention is derived from the wonderful number of flint
tools, of a very antique type, which, as stated in the last
chapter, occur in undisturbed strata, associated with the
bones of extinct quadrupeds.
As much doubt has been cast on the question, whether the
so-called flint hatchets have really been shaped by the hands
of man, it will be desirable to begin by satisfying the reader's
mind on that point, before inviting him to study the details
of sections of successive beds of mud, sand, and gravel, which
vary considerably even in contiguous localities.
Since the spring of 1859, I have paid three visits to
the Valley of the Somme, and examined all the principal
CHAP. vii. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. 113
localities of these flint tools. In my excursions around
Abbeville, I was accompanied by M. Boucher de Perthes,
and during one of my explorations in the Amiens district, by
Mr. Prestwich. The first time I entered the pits at
St. Acheul, I obtained seventy flint instruments, all of them
collected from the drift in the course of the preceding five
or six weeks. The two prevailing forms of these tools are
represented in the annexed figures 8 and 9, each of which are
half the size of the originals ; the first being the spear-headed
form, varying in length from six to eight inches ; the second,
the oval form, which is not unlike some stone implements,
used to this day as hatchets and tomahawks by natives of
Australia, but with this difference, that the edge in the
Australian weapons (as in the case of those called celts in
Europe) has been produced by friction, whereas the cutting
edge in the old tools of the Valley of the Somme was always
gained by the simple fracture of the flint, and by the
repetition of many dexterous blows.
The oval-shaped Australian weapons, however, differ in
being sharpened at one end only. The other, though reduced
by fracture to the same general form, is left rough, in which
state it is fixed into a cleft stick, which serves as a handle.
To this it is firmly bound by thin straps of opossum's hide.
One of these tools, now in my possession, was given me by
Mr, Farquharson of Haughton, who saw a native using it in
1854, on the Auburn river, in Burnet district, North Australia.
Out of more than a hundred flint implements which I
obtained at St. Acheul, not a few had their edges more or
less fractured or worn, either by use as instruments before
they were buried in gravel, or by being rolled in the river's
bed.
Some of these tools were probably used as weapons, both
of war and of the chase, others to grub up roots, cut down
trees, and scoop out canoes. Some of them may have served,
i
114
FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME.
CHAP. VII.
Fig. 8
Flint implement from St. Acheul, near Amiens, of the spear-head shape.
Fig. 8 Half the size of the original, which is seven and a half inches long.
a Side view. b Same seen edgewise.
These spear-headed implements have been found in greater number, pro
portionally to the oval ones, in the upper level gravel at St. Acheul, than
in any of the lower gravels in the valley of the Somme. In these last the
oval form predominates, especially at Abbeville.
CHAP. VII. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. 115
Fig. 10
Flint implements from the Post-pliocene Drift of Abbeville and Amiens.
Fig. 9 a Oval-shaped flint hatchet from Mautort, near Abbeville, half
size of original, which is five and a half inches long, from a bed of gravel
underlying the fluvio-marine stratum.
b Same seen edgewise.
c Shows a recent fracture of the edge of the same at the point a, or
near the top. This portion of the tool, c, is drawn of the natural
size, the black central part being the unaltered flint, the white
outer coating, the layer which has been formed by discoloration
or bleaching since the tool was first made.
The entire surface of No. 9 must have been black when first shaped,
and the bleaching to such a depth must have been the work of
time, whether produced by exposure to the sun and air before it
was embedded, or afterwards when it lay deep in the soil.
Fig. 10. Flint tool from St. Acheul, seen edgewise; original, six and a half
inches long, and three inches wide.
b, c Portion not artificially shaped.
b, a Part chipped into shape, and having a cutting edge at a.
I 2
116 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. CHAP. vn.
as Mr. Prestwich has suggested, for cutting holes in the ice
both for fishing and for obtaining water, as will be explained
in the 8th chapter when we consider the arguments in favour
of the higher level drift having belonged to a period when
the rivers were frozen over for several months every winter.
When the natural form of a chalk-flint presented a
suitable handle at one end, as in the specimen, fig. 10, that
part was left as found. The portion, for example, between
b and c has probably not been altered ; the protuberances
which are fractured having been broken off by river action
before the flint was chipped artificially. The other ex
tremity, a, has been worked till it acquired a proper shape
and cutting edge.
Many of the hatchets are stained of an ochreous-yellow
colour, when they have been buried in yellow gravel, others
have acquired white or brown tints, according to the matrix
in which they have been enclosed.
This accordance in the colouring of the flint tools with the
character of the bed from which they have come, indicates,
says Mr. Prestwich, not only a real derivation from such strata,
but also a sojourn therein of equal duration to that of the
naturally broken flints forming part of the same beds.*
The surface of many of the tools is encrusted with a film
of carbonate of lime, while others are adorned by those
ramifying crystallisations called dendrites (see figs. 11 13),
usually consisting of the mixed oxyds of iron and manganese,
forming extremely delicate blackish brown sprigs, resembling
the smaller kinds of sea weed. They are a useful test of
antiquity when suspicions are entertained of the workmen
having forged the hatchets which they offer for sale. The
most general test, however, of the genuineness of the imple
ments obtained by purchase is their superficial varnish-like
or vitreous gloss, as contrasted with the dull aspect of freshly
* Philosophical Transactions, 1861, p. 297.
CHAP. vii. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN VALLEY OF THE SOMME. 117
fractured flints. I also remarked, during each of my three
visits to Amiens, that there were some extensive gravel-pits,
such as those of Montiers and St. Roch, agreeing in their
geological character with those of St. Acheul, and only a mile
or two distant, where the workmen, although familiar with
the forms, and knowing the marketable value of the articles
above described, assured me that they had never been able
to find a single implement.
Fig. 12 Fig. 13
Dendrites on surfaces of flint hatchets in the drift of St. Acheul, near Amiens.
Fig. 11, a Natural size. Fig. 12, b Natural size. c Magnified.
Fig. 13, d Natural size, e Magnified.
Respecting the authenticity of the tools as works of
art, Professor Ramsay, than whom no one could be a more
competent judge, observes : ' For more than twenty years,
like others of my craft, I have daily handled stones, whether
fashioned by nature or art ; and the flint hatchets of Amiens
and Abbeville seem to me as clearly works of art as any
Sheffield whittle.'*
Mr. Evans classifies the implements under three heads,
two of which, the spear heads and the oval or almond-shaped
kinds, have already been described. The third form, fig. 14,
consists of flakes, apparently intended for knives or some
of the smaller ones for arrow heads.
In regard to their origin, Mr. Evans observes that there
is a uniformity of shape, a correctness of outline, and a
sharpness about the cutting edges and points, which cannot
be due to anything but design. f
Of these knives and flakes, I obtained several specimens
* Athenaeum, July 16, 1859. f Archseologica, voL xxxviii.
118 THEIR FORMS AND GREAT NUMBERS. CHA.P. vii.
from a pit which I caused to be dug at Abbeville, in sand in
contact with the chalk, and below certain fluvio-marine beds,
which will be alluded to in the next chapter.
Flint knife or flake from below the sand containing Cyrena flnminalis.
Menchecourt, Abbeville.
d Transverse section along the line of fracture, b, c.
Size, two-thirds of the original.
Between the spear-head and oval shapes, there are various
intermediate gradations, and there are also a vast variety of
very rude implements, many of which may have been rejected
as failures, and others struck off as chips in the course of
manufacturing the more perfect ones. Some of these chips
can only be recognised by an experienced eye as bearing
marks of human workmanship.
It has often been asked, how, without the use of metallic
hammers, so many of these oval and spear-headed tools could
have been wrought into so uniform a shape. Mr. Evans, in
order experimentally to illustrate the process, constructed a
stone hammer, by mounting a pebble in a wooden handle,
and with this tool struck off flakes from the edge on both
sides of a chalk flint, till it acquired precisely the same shape
as the oval tool, fig, 9,*p. 115.
If I were invited to estimate the probable number of the
more perfect tools found in the valley of the Somme since
1842, rejecting all the knives, and all that might be suspected
of being spurious or forged, I should conjecture that they far
exceeded a thousand. Yet it would be a great mistake to
imagine that an antiquary or geologist, who should devote
a few weeks to the exploration of such a valley as that of the
CHAP. vn. GLOBULAR SPONGES ARTIFICIALLY PERFORATED. 119
Somme, would himself be able to detect a single specimen.
But few tools were lying on the surface. The rest have been
exposed to view by the removal of such a volume of sand,
clay, and gravel, that the price of the discovery of one of
them could only be estimated by knowing how many hundred
labourers have toiled at the fortifications of Abbeville, or in
the sand and gravel pits near that city, and around Amiens,
for road materials and other economical purposes, during the
last twenty years.
In the gravel pits of St. Acheul, and in some others near
Amiens, small round bodies, having a tubular cavity in the
centre, occur. They are well known as fossils of the white
chalk. Dr. Eigollot suggested that they might have been
a, b Coscinopora globularis If Orb. Orbitolina concava Parker and Jones,
c Part of the same magnified.
strung together as beads, and he supposed the hole in the
middle to have been artificial. Some of these round bodies
are found entire in the chalk and in the gravel, others have
naturally a hole passing through them, and sometimes one
or two holes penetrating some way in from the surface,
but not extending to the other side. Others, like 6, fig. 15,
have a large cavity, which has a very artificial aspect.
It is impossible to decide whether they have or have not
served as personal ornaments, recommended by their globular
form, lightness, and by being less destructible than ordinary
chalk. Granting that there were natural cavities in the axis of
some of them, it does not follow that these may not have been
taken advantage of for stringing them as beads, while others
may have been artificially bored through. Dr. Rigollot's
120 GLOBULAR SPONGES ARTIFICIALLY PERFORATED. CHAP. vn.
argument in favour of their having been used as necklaces or
bracelets, appears to me a sound one. He says he often found
small heaps or groups of them in one place, all perforated, just
as if, when swept into the river's bed by a flood, the bond which
had united them together remained unbroken.*
* Kigollot, M&noire sur des Instruments en Silex, &c. p. 16. Amiens, 1854.
CHAP. vin. LOWER-LEVEL GRAVELS OF THE SOMME VALLEY. 121
CHAPTER VIII.
POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS OF THE
VALLEY OF THE SOMME,
Concluded.
FLUVIO-MARINE STRATA, WITH FLINT IMPLEMENTS, NEAR ABBEVILLE
MARINE SHELLS IN SAME CYRENA FLUMINALIS MAMMALIA
ENTIRE SKELETON OF RHINOCEROS FLINT IMPLEMENTS, WHY FOUND
LOW DOWN IN FLUVIATILE DEPOSITS RIVERS SHIFTING THEIR
CHANNELS RELATIVE AGES OF HIGHER AND LOWER-LEVEL GRAVELS
SECTION OF ALLUVIUM OF ST. ACHEUL TWO SPECIES OF ELEPHANT
AND HIPPOPOTAMUS COEXISTING WITH MAN IN FRANCE VOLUME OF
DRIFT, PROVING ANTIQUITY OF FLINT IMPLEMENTS ABSENCE OF
HUMAN BONES IN TOOL-BEARING ALLUVIUM, HOW EXPLAINED VALUE
OF CERTAIN KINDS OF NEGATIVE EVIDENCE TESTED THEREBY
HUMAN BONES NOT FOUND IN DRAINED LAKE OF HAARLEM.
IN the section of the valley of the Somme, given at p. 106
(fig. 7), the successive formations newer than the chalk
are numbered in chronological order, beginning with the
most modern, or the peat, which is marked No. 1, and
which has been treated of in the last chapter. Next in the
order of antiquity are the lower-level gravels No. 2, which we
have now to describe; after which the alluvium, No. 3, found
at higher levels, or about eighty and one hundred feet above
the river-plain, will remain to be considered.
I have selected, as illustrating the old alluvium of the
Somme occurring at levels slightly elevated above the present
river, the sand and gravel-pits of Menchecourt, in the north
west suburbs of Abbeville, to which, as before stated, p. 94,
attention was first drawn by M. Boucher de Perthes, in his
work on Celtic antiquities. Here, although in every adjoin-
*122 SECTION OF STEATA AT MENCHECOURT. CHAP. VIIT.
ing pit some minor variations in the nature and thickness of
the superimposed deposits may be seen, there is yet a general
approach to uniformity in the series. The only stratum of
which the relative age is somewhat doubtful, is the gravel
marked a, underlying the peat, and resting on the chalk. It
is only known by borings, and some of it may be of the same
age as No. 3 ; but I believe it to be for the most part of more
modern origin, consisting of the wreck of all the older gravel,
including No. 3, and formed during the last hollowing out
Fig. 16
Chalk ^ ^^
^a** n 2 Somme .R
!!!*^nnii =
Sea, Level
Chalk
Section of fluvio-marine strata, containing flint implements and bones of extinct
mammalia, at Menchecourt, Abbeville.*
1 Brown clay with angular flints, and occasionally chalk rubble, unstratified,
following the slope of the hill, probably of subaerial origin, of very varying
thickness, from two to five feet and upwards.
2 Calcareous loam, buff-coloured, resembling loess, for the most part un
stratified, in some places with slight traces of stratification, containing
freshwater and land shells, with bones of elephants, &c. ; thickness about
fifteen feet.
3 Alternations of beds of gravel, marl, and sand, with freshwater and land
shells, and in some of the lower sands, a mixture of marine shells ; also
bones of elephant, rhinoceros, &c., and flint implements ; thickness about
twelve feet.
a Gravel underlying peat, age undetermined.
b Layer of impervious clay, separating the gravel from the peat.
and deepening of the valley immediately before the com
mencement of the growth of peat.
The greater number of flint implements have been dug out
of No. 3, often near the bottom, and twenty-five, thirty, or
even more than thirty feet below the surface of No. 1.
* For detailed sections and maps of this district, seePrestwich, Philosophical
Transactions, 1860, p. 277.
CHAP. viil. MARINE SHELLS AT MENCHECOURT. 123
A geologist will perceive by a glance at the section that
the valley of the Somme must have been excavated nearly
to its present depth and width when the strata of No. 3 were
thrown down, and that after the deposits Nos. 3, 2, and 1 had
been formed in succession, the present valley was scooped
out, patches only of Nos. 3 and 2 being left. For these
deposits cannot originally have ended abruptly as they now
do, but must have once been continuous farther towards the
centre of the valley.
To begin with the oldest, No. 3, it is made up of a suc
cession of beds, chiefly of freshwater origin, but occasionally
a mixture of marine and fluviatile shells is observed in it,
proving that the sea sometimes gained upon the river, whether
at high tides or when the fresh water was less in quantity
during the dry season, and sometimes perhaps when the land
was slightly depressed in level. All these accidents might
occur again and again at the mouth of any river, and give rise
to alternations of fluviatile and marine strata, such as are
seen at Menchecourt.
In the lowest beds of gravel and sand in contact with the
chalk, flint hatchets, some perfect, others much rolled, have
been found; and in a sandy bed in this position some work
men, whom I employed to sink a pit, found four flint knives.
Above this sand and gravel occur beds of white and siliceous
sand, containing shells of the genera Planorbis, Limnea,
Paludina, Valvata, Cyclas, Cyrena, Helix, and others, all now
natives of the same part of France, except Cyrena fluminalis
(fig. 17), which no longer lives in Europe, but inhabits the
Nile, and many parts of Asia, including Cashmere, where it
abounds. No species of Cyrena is now met with in a living
state in Europe. Mr. Prestwich first observed it fossil at
Menchecourt, and it has since been found in two or three
contiguous sand-pits, always in the fluvio-marine bed.
The following marine shells occur mixed with the fresh-
124
SPECIFIC NAMES OF CYRENA FLUMINALIS.
CHAF. VIII.
water species above enumerated: Buccinum undatum, Lit-
torina littorea, Nassa reticulata, Purpura lapillus, Tellina
solidula, Cardium edule, and fragments of some others.
Several of these I have myself collected entire, though in a
state of great decomposition, lying in the white sand called
6 sable aigre ' by the workmen. They are all littoral species
now proper to the contiguous coast of France. Their oc
currence in a fossil state associated with freshwater shells at
Menchecourt, had been noticed as long ago as 1836 by
Fig. 17
a Interior of left valve, from Gray's Thurrock, Essex.
b Hinge of same- magnified.
c Interior of right valve of a small specimen, from Shacklewell, London.
d Outer surface of right valve, from Erith, Kent.
Cyrena fluminalis Muller
Euphratis Chemnitz
consobrina Gaillaud
trigonula 8. Wood .
gemmelarii Philippi
Duchastelii Nyst
Corbicula fluminalis Morsch
Dates of Specific Names.
. 1774
. 1782
. 1823
. 1834
. 1836
. 1838
1853
MM. Ravin and Baillon, before M. Boucher de Perthes com
menced the researches which have since made the locality
so celebrated.* The numbers since collected preclude all
idea of their having been brought inland as eatable shells by
the fabricators of the flint hatchets found at the bottom
* D'Archiac, Histoire des Progres, &c.,vol. ii. p. 154.
CHAP. viii. MAMMALIA FOUND AT MENCHECOURT. 125
of the fluvio-marine sands. From the same beds, and in
marls alternating with the sands, remains of the elephant,
rhinoceros, and other mammalia, have been exhumed.
Above the fluvio-marine strata are those designated No. 2
in the section (fig. 16), which are almost devoid of strati
fication, and probably formed of mud or sediment thrown
down by the waters of the river when they overflowed the
ancient alluvial plain of that day. Some land shells, a few
river shells, and bones of mammalia, some of them extinct,
occur in No. 2. Its upper surface has been deeply furrowed
and cut into by the action of water, at the time when the
earthy matter of No. 1 was superimposed. The materials of
this uppermost deposit are arranged as if they had been the
result of land floods, taking place after the formations 2 and
3 had been raised, or had become exposed to denudation.
The fluvio-marine strata and overlying loam of Menche-
court recur on the opposite or left bank of the alluvial
plain of the Somme, at a distance of two or three miles.
They are found at Mautort, among other places, and I ob
tained there the flint hatchet figured at p. 115 (fig. 9), of an
oval form. It was extracted from gravel, above which were
strata containing a mixture of marine and freshwater shells,
precisely like those of Menchecourt. In the alluvium of all
parts of the valley, both at high and low levels, rolled bones
are sometimes met with in the gravel. Some of the flint
tools in the gravel of Abbeville have their angles very
perfect, others have been much triturated, as if in the bed
of the main river or some of its tributaries.
The mammalia most frequently cited as having been
found in the deposits Nos. 2 and 3 at Menchecourt, are the
following :
Elephas primigenius.
Rhinoceros tichorhinus.
Equus fossilis Owen.
126 ENTIRE SKELETON OF RHINOCEROS. CHAP. vin.
Bos primigenius.
Cervus somonensis Cuvier.
C. Tarandus prisons Cuvier.
Felis spelcea.
Hycena spelcea.
The ZTrsus spelceus has also been mentioned by some
writers ; but M. Lartet says he has sought in vain for it
among the osteological treasures sent from Abbeville to Cuvier
at Paris, and in other collections. The same palaeontologist,
after a close scrutiny of the bones sent formerly to the Paris
Museum from the valley of the Somme, observed that some
of them bore the evident marks of an instrument, agreeing
well with incisions such as a rude flint-saw would produce.
Among other bones mentioned as having been thus artificially
cut, are those of a Rhinoceros tichorhinus, and the antlers of
Cervus somonensis.*
The evidence obtained by naturalists that some of the
extinct mammalia of Menchecourt really lived and died in
this part of France, at the time of the embedding of the flint
tools in fluviatile strata, is most satisfactory ; and not the less
so for having been put on record long before any suspicion
was entertained that works of art would ever be detected
in the same beds. Thus M. Baillon, writing in 1834 to
M. Ravin, says, ( They begin to meet with fossil bones at
the depth of ten or twelve feet in the Menchecourt sand-pits,
but they find a much greater quantity at the depth of eighteen
and twenty feet. Some of them were evidently broken before
they were embedded, others are rounded, having, without
doubt, been rolled by running water. It is at the bottom of
the sand-pits that the most entire bones occur. Here they
lie without having undergone fracture or friction, and seem
to have been articulated together at the time when they
were covered up. I found in one place a whole hind limb
* Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society, London, vol. xvi. p. 471.
CHAP. VITT. FLINT IMPLEMENTS, WHY FOUND IN DEEP DEPOSITS. 127
of a rhinoceros, the bones of which were still in their usual
relative position. They must have been joined together by
ligaments, and even surrounded by muscles at the time of
their interment. The entire skeleton of the same species
was lying at a short distance from the spot.' *
If we suppose that the greater number of the flint imple
ments occurring in the neighbourhood of Abbeville and
Amiens were brought by river action into their present
position, we can at once explain why so large a proportion of
them are found at considerable depths from the surface, for
they would naturally be buried in gravel and not in fine
sediment, or what may be termed ' inundation mud,' such as
No. 2 (fig. 16, p. 122), a deposit from tranquil water, or where
the stream had not sufficient force or velocity to sweep along
chalk flints, whether wrought or unwrought. Hence we
have almost always to pass down through a mass of incum
bent loam with land shells, or through fine sand with fresh
water mollusks, before we get into the beds of gravel con
taining hatchets. Occasionally a weapon used as a projectile
may have fallen into quiet water, or may have dropped
from a canoe to the bottom of the river, or may have been
floated by ice, as are some stones occasionally by the Thames
in severe winters, and carried over the meadows bordering its
banks ; but such cases are exceptional, though helping to
explain how isolated flint tools or pebbles and angular stones
are now and then to be seen in the midst of the finest loams.
The endless variety in the sections of the alluvium of the
valley of the Somme, may be ascribed to the frequent silting
up of the main stream and its tributaries during different
stages of the excavation of the valley, probably also during
changes in the level of the land. As a rule, when a river
attacks and undermines one bank, it throws down gravel and
sand on the opposite side of its channel, which is growing
* Musee Societe Roy. d'Emulation d' Abbeville, 1834, p. 197.
128 RIVERS SHIFTING THEIR CHANNELS. CHAP. VTII.
shallower, and is soon destined to be raised so high as to form
an addition to the alluvial plain, and to be only occasionally
inundated. In this way, after much encroachment on cliff or
meadow in one direction, we find at the end of centuries that
the width of the channel has not been enlarged, for the new
made ground is raised after a time to the full height of the
older alluvial tract. Sometimes an island is formed in mid
stream, the current flowing for a while on both sides of it,
and at length scooping out a deeper channel on one side so
as to leave the other to be gradually filled up during freshets
and afterwards elevated by inundation mud, or ' brick-earth.'
During the levelling up of these old channels, a flood some
times cuts into and partially removes portions of the previously
stratified matter, causing those repeated signs of furrowing
and filling up of cavities, those memorials of doing and
undoing, of which the tool-bearing sands and gravels of
Abbeville and Amiens afford such reiterated illustrations, and
of which a parallel is furnished by the ancient alluvium of the
Thames valley, where similar bones of extinct mammalia and
shells, including Cyrena fluminalis, are found.
Professor Noeggerath, of Bonn, informs me that, about the
year 1845, when the bed of the Khine was deepened artifi
cially by the blasting and removal of rock in the narrows at
Bingerloch, not far from Bingen, several flint hatchets and
an extraordinary number of iron weapons of the Roman
period were brought up by the dredge from the bed of the
great river. The decomposition of the iron had caused much
of the gravel to be cemented together into a conglomerate.
In such a case we have only to suppose the Rhine to deviate
slightly from its course, changing its position, as it has often
done in various parts of its plain in historical times, and then
tools of the stone and iron periods w6uld be found in gravel
at the bottom, with a great thickness of sand and overlying
loam deposited above them.
CHAP. vin. RIVEES SHIFTING THEIR CHANNELS. 129
Changes in a river plain, such as those above alluded to,
give rise frequently to ponds, swamps, and marshes, marking
the course of old beds or branches of the river not yet filled
up, and in these depressions shells proper both to running
and stagnant water may be preserved, and quadrupeds may
be mired. The latest and uppermost deposit of the series
will be loam or brick-earth, with land and amphibious shells
(Helix and Succinea), while below will follow strata contain
ing freshwater shells, implying continuous submergence;
and lowest of all in most sections will be the coarse gravel
accumulated by a current of considerable strength and
velocity.
When the St. Katharine docks were excavated at London,
and similar works executed on the banks of the Mersey, old
ships were dug out, as I have elsewhere noticed,* showing
how the Thames and Mersey have in modern times been
shifting their channels. Recently, an old silted-up bed of
the Thames has been discovered by boring at Shoeburyness
at the mouth of the river opposite Sheerness, as I learn from
Mr. Milne. The old deserted branch is separated from the
new or present channel of the Thames, by a tertiary outlier
composed of London clay. The depth of the old branch, or
the thickness of fluviatile strata with which it has been filled
up, is seventy-five feet. The actual channel in the neigh
bourhood is now sixty feet deep, but there is probably ten or
fifteen feet of stratified sand and gravel at the bottom ; so that,
should the river deviate again from its course, its present bed
might be the receptacle of a fluvio-marine formation seventy-
five feet thick, equal to the former one of Shoeburyness, and
more considerable than that of Abbeville. It would consist both
of freshwater and marine strata, as the salt water is carried by
the tide far up above Sheerness ; but in order that such de-
* Principles of Geology.
K
130 RELATIVE AGES OF HIGH AND LOW GRAVELS. CHAP. nil.
posits should resemble, in geological position, the Menche-
court beds, they must be raised ten or fifteen feet above their
present level, and be partially eroded. Such erosion they
would not fail to suffer during,the process of upheaval, because
the Thames would scour out its bed, and not alter its position
relatively to the sea, while the land was gradually rising.
Before the canal was made at Abbeville, the tide was per
ceptible in the Somme for some distance above that city. It
would only require, therefore, a slight subsidence to allow the
saltwater to reach Menchecourt, as it did in the post- pliocene
period. As a stratum containing exclusively land and fresh
water shells usually underlies the fluvio-marine sands at
Menchecourt, it seems that the river first prevailed there, after
which the land subsided ; and then there was an upheaval
which raised the country to a greater height than that at
which it now stands, after which there was a second sinking,
indicated by the position of the peat, as already explained
(p. 111). All these changes happened since man first in
habited this region.
At several places in the environs of Abbeville there are
nuviatile deposits at a higher level by fifty feet than those
of Menchecourt, resting in like manner on the chalk. One
of these occurs in the suburbs of the city at Moulin Quignon,
one hundred feet above the Somme and on the same side of
the valley as Menchecourt, and containing flint implements
of the same antique type and the bones of elephants ; but no
marine shells have been found there, nor in any gravel or
sand at higher elevations than the Menchecourt marine shells.
It has been a matter of discussion among geologists whether
the higher or the lower sands and gravels of the Somme valley
are the more ancient. As a general rule, when there are
alluvial formations of different ages in the same valley, those
which occupy a more elevated position above the river plain are
the oldest. In Auvergne and Velay, in Central France, where
CHAP. VIII. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN GRAVEL NEAR AMIENS. 131
the bones of fossil quadrupeds occur at all heights above the
present rivers from ten to one thousand feet, we observe the
terrestrial fauna to depart in character from that now living
in proportion as we ascend to higher terraces and platforms.
We pass from the lower alluvium, containing the mammoth,
tichorhine rhinoceros, and reindeer, to various older groups of
fossils, till, on a table-land a thousand feet high (near Le Puy,
for example), the abrupt termination of which overlooks the
present valley, we discover an old extinct river-bed covered
by a current of ancient lava, showing where the lowest level
was once situated. In that elevated alluvium the remains of
a tertiary mastodon and other quadrupeds of like antiquity
are embedded.
If the Menchecourt beds had been first formed, and the
valley, after being nearly as deep and wide as it is now, had
subsided, the sea must have advanced inland, causing small
delta-like accumulations at successive heights, wherever the
main river and its tributaries met the sea. Such a movement,
especially if it were intermittent, and interrupted occasionally
by long pauses, would very well account for the accumulation
of stratified debris which we encounter at certain points in
the valley, especially around Abbeville and Amiens. But we
are precluded from adopting this theory by the entire absence
of marine shells, and the presence of fresh-water and land
species, and mammalian bones, in considerable abundance, in
the drift both of higher and lower levels above Abbeville.
Had there been a total absence of all organic remains, we
might have imagined the former presence of the sea, and the
destruction of such remains might have been ascribed to
carbonic acid or other decomposing causes; but the post-
pliocene and implement-bearing strata can be shown by
their fossils to be of fluviatile origin.
K 2
132 SECTION OF ALLUVIUM OF ST. ACHEUL. CHAr. vin.
Flint Implements in Gravel near Amiens.
Gravel of St. Acheul.
When we ascend the valley of the Somme, from Abbeville
to Amiens, a distance of about twenty-five miles, we observe
a repetition of all the same alluvial phenomena which we
have seen exhibited at Menchecourt and its neighbourhood,
with the single exception of the absence of marine shells and of
Cyrena fluminalis. We find lower-level gravel, such as No. 2,
fig. 7, p. 106, and higher-level alluvium, such as No. 3, the
latter rising to one hundred feet above the plain, which at
Amiens is about fifty feet above the level of the river at
Abbeville. In both the upper and lower gravels, as Dr. Ei-
gollot stated in 1854, flint tools and the bones of extinct
animals, together with river shells and land shells of living
species, abound.
Immediately below Amiens, a great mass of stratified gravel,
slightly elevated above the alluvial plain of the Somme, is
seen at St. Roch, and half a mile farther down the valley at
Montiers. Between these two places, a small tributary stream,
called the Celle, joins the Somme. In the gravel at Montiers,
Mr. Prestwich and I found some flint knives, one of them flat
on one side, but the other carefully worked, and exhibi
ting many fractures, clearly produced by blows skilfully
applied. Some of these knives were taken from so low a level
as to satisfy us that this great bed of gravel at Montiers, as
well as that of the contiguous quarries of St. Roch, which
seems 'to be a continuation of the same deposit, may be
referred to the human period. Dr. Eigollot had already
mentioned flint hatchets as obtained by him from St. Koch,
but as none have been found there of late years, his statement
was thought to require confirmation. The discovery, therefore,
of these flint knives in gravel of the same age was interesting,
CHAP. VIII. FOSSIL MOLAR TEETH OF ELEPHANTS.
Fig. 18
133
Elcpkas primigenius.
Penultimate molar, lower jaw, right side, one-third of natural size, Post-pliocene.
Coexisted with man.
Fig, 19
Elcphas antiquus Falconer.
Penultimate molar, lower jaw, right side, size one-third of nature, Post-pliocene
and Newer pliocene. Coexisted with man.
Fig. 20 *
Elcphas meridionalis Nesti.
Penultimate molar, lower jaw, right side, size one-third of original, Newer plio
cene, Saint Prest, near Chartres, and Norwich Crag. Not yet proved to have
coexisted with man.
* For fig. 20, I am indebted to
M.Lartet^ and fig. 18 will be found in
his paper in Bulletin de laSociete Geo-
logique de France, Mars 1859. Fig. 19
is from Fauna Sivalensis, Falconer
and Cautley.
134 SECTION OF GRAVEL AT ST. ACHEUL. CHAP. vin.
especially as many tusks of a hippopotamus have been ob
tained from the gravel of St. Roch some of these recently by
Mr. Prestwich ; while M. Gamier of Amiens has procured a
fine elephant's molar from the same pits, which Dr. Falconer
refers to Mephas antiquus, see fig. 19, p. 133. Hence I
infer that both these animals co-existed with man.
The alluvial formations of Montiers are very instructive in
another point of view. If, leaving the lower gravel of that
place, which is topped with loam or brick-earth (of which
the upper portion is about thirty feet above the level of the
Somme), we ascend the chalky slope to the height of about
eighty feet, another deposit of gravel and sand, with fluviatile
shells in a perfect condition, occurs, indicating most clearly
an ancient river-bed, the waters of which^ran habitually at
that higher level before the valley had been scooped out to
its present depth. This superior deposit is on the same side
of the Somme, and about as high, as the lowest part of the
celebrated formation of St. Acheul, two or three miles distant,
to which I shall now allude.
The terrace of St. Acheul may be described as a gently
sloping ledge of chalk, covered with gravel, topped as usual
with loam or fine sediment, the surface of the loam being
100 feet above the Somme, and about 150 above the sea.
Many stone coffins of the Gallo-Roman period have been
dug out of the upper portion of this alluvial mass. The
trenches made for burying them sometimes penetrate to the
depth of eight or nine feet from the surface, entering the
upper part of No. 3 of the sections Nos. 21 and 21 A. They
prove that when the Romans were in Gaul they found this
terrace in the same condition as it is now, or rather as it
was before the removal of so much gravel, sand, clay, and
loam, for repairing roads, and for making bricks and pottery.
In the annexed section, which I observed during my last visit
in 1860, it will be seen that a fragment of an elephant's tooth
CHAP. VIIT.
SECTION OF GRAVEL AT ST. ACHETJL.
135
is noticed as having been dug out of unstratified sandy loam
at the point a, eleven feet from the surface. This was found
at the time of my visit ; and at a lower point, at b, eighteen
Fig. 21
Section of a gravel pit containing flint implements at St. Acheul, near
Amiens, observed in July 1860.
1 Vegetable soil and made ground, two to three feet thick.
2 Brown loam with some angular flints, in parts passing into ochreous
gravel, filling up indentations on the surface of No. 3, three
feet thick.
3 White siliceous sand with layers of chalky marl, and included
fragments of chalk, for the most part unstratified, nine feet.
4 Flint-gravel, and whitish chalky sand, flints subangular, average
size of fragments, three inches diameter, but with some large
unbroken chalk flints intermixed, cross stratification in parts.
Bones of mammalia, grinder of elephant at b, and flint implement
at c, ten to fourteen feet.
5 Chalk with flints.
a Part of elephant's molar, eleven feet from the surface.
b Entire molar of E. primigenius, seventeen feet from surface.
c Position of flint hatchet, eighteen feet from surface.
feet from the surface, a large nearly entire and unrolled mo
lar of the same species was obtained, which is now in my pos
session. It has been pronounced by Dr. Falconer to belong
to Elephas primigenius.
136 SANDSTONE BLOCKS IN GRAVEL OF SOMME. CHAP. vm.
A stone hatchet of an oval form, like that represented at
fig. 9, p. 115, was discovered at the same time, about one foot
lower down, at c, in densely compressed gravel. The surface
of the fundamental chalk is uneven in this pit, and slopes
towards the .valley-plain of the Somme. In a horizontal
distance of twenty feet, I found a difference in vertical height
of seven feet. In the chalky sand, sometimes occurring in
interstices between the separate fragments of flint, constituting
the coarse gravel No. 4, entire as well as broken fresh-water
shells are often met with. To some it may appear enigmatical
how such fragile objects could have escaped annihilation in a
river-bed, when flint tools and much gravel were shoved
along the bottom ; but I have seen the dredging instrument
employed in the Thames, above and below London Bridge,
to deepen the river, and worked by steam power, scoop up
gravel and sand from the bottom, and then pour the contents
pell-mell into the boat, and still many specimens of Limnea,
Planorbis, Paludina, Cyclas, and other shells might be taken
out uninjured from the gravel.
It will be observed that the gravel No. 4 is obliquely stra
tified, and that its surface had undergone denudation before the
white sandy loam, No. 3, was superimposed. The materials
of the gravel at d must have been cemented or frozen together
into a somewhat coherent mass to allow the projecting ridge,
dy to stand up five feet above the general surface, the
sides being in some places perpendicular. In No. 3 we
probably behold an example of a passage from river-silt to
inundation mud, or loess. In some parts of it, land shells
occur.
It has been ascertained by MM. Buteux, Ravin, and other
observers conversant with the geology of this part of France,
that in none of the alluvial deposits, ancient or modern, are
there any fragments of rocks foreign to the basin of the
Somme no erratics which could only be explained by sup-
CHAP. vm. FOSSIL MAMMALIA IN DRIFT OF THE SOMME. 137
posing them to have been brought by ice, during a general
submergence of the country, from some other hydrographical
basin.
But in some of the pits at St. Acheul there are seen in
the beds No. 4, fig. 21, not only well-rounded tertiary pebbles,
but great blocks of hard sandstone, of the kind called in the
south of England ( greyweathers,' some of which are three
or four feet and upwards in diameter. They are usually
angular, and when spherical owe their shape generally to
an original concretionary structure, and not to trituration
in a river's bed. These large fragments of stone abound
both in the higher and lower level gravels round Amiens and
at the higher level at Abbeville. They have also been
traced far up the valley above Amiens, wherever patches of
the old alluvium occur. They have all been derived from
the tertiary strata which once covered the chalk. Their
dimensions are such that it is impossible to imagine a
river like the present Somme, flowing through a flat
country, with a gentle fall towards the sea, to have carried
them for miles down its channel, unless ice cooperated
as a transporting power. Their angularity also favours the
supposition of their having been floated by ice, or rendered
so buoyant by it as to have escaped much of the wear and
tear which blocks propelled along the bottom of a river
channel would otherwise suffer. We must remember that the
present mildness of the winters in Picardy and the north-west
of Europe generally is exceptional in the northern hemisphere,
and that large fragments of granite, sandstone, and limestone
are now carried annually by ice down the Canadian rivers in
latitudes farther south than Paris. *
Another sign of ice agency observed by me in many pits at
St. Acheul, and of which Mr. Prestwich has given a good
* Principles of Geology, 9th ed. p. 220.
138
CONTORTED STRATA AT ST. ACHEUL.
CHAP. VIII.
illustration in one of his published sections, deserves notice.
It consists in flexures and contortions of the strata of sand,
Fig. 21 A
Contorted fluviatile strata at St. Acheul (Prestwich, Phil. Trans. 1861, p. 299).
1 Surface soil.
2 Brown loam as in fig. 21, p. 135, thickness, six feet.
3 "White sand with bent and folded layers of marl thickness, six feet.
4 Gravel, as in fig. 21, p. 135 with bones of mammalia and flint im
plements.
A Graves filled with made ground and human bones.
b and c Seams of laminated marl often bent round upon themselves.
d Beds of gravel with sharp curves.
marl, and gravel (as seen at b, c and d, fig. 21 A), which
they have evidently undergone since their original deposition,
and from which both the underlying chalk and part of the
overlying beds of sand No. 3 are usually exempt.
In my former writings I have attributed this kind of
derangement to two causes ; first, the pressure of ice running
aground on yielding banks of mud and sand ; and, secondly,
the melting of masses of ice and snow of unequal thickness,
on which horizontal layers of mud, sand, and other fine and
coarse materials had accumulated. The late Mr. Trimmer
first pointed out in what manner the unequal failure of sup
port caused by the liquefaction of underlying or intercalated
snow and ice might give rise to such complicated foldings.*
* See Chapter XII.
CHAP. VIII. ICE-ACTION IN THE BEDS OF RIVEKS. 139
When 6 ice-jams' occur on the St. Lawrence and other
Canadian rivers (lat. 46 N.), the sheets of ice, which become
packed or forced under or over one another, assume in most
cases a highly inclined and sometimes even a vertical position.
They are often observed to be coated on one side with mud,
sand, or gravel frozen on to them, derived from shallows in
the river on which they rested when congelation first reached
the bottom.
As often as portions of these packs melt near the margin
of the river, the layers of mud, sand, and gravel, which result
from their liquefaction, cannot fail to assume a very abnormal
arrangement, very perplexing to a geologist who should
undertake to interpret them without having the ice-clue in
his mind.
Mr. Prestwich has suggested that ground-ice may have had
its influence in modifying the ancient alluvium of the
Somme.* It is certain that ice in this form plays an active
part every winter in giving motion to stones and gravel in
the beds of rivers in European Russia and Siberia. It appears
that when in those countries the streams are reduced nearly to
tne freezing point, congelation begins frequently at the
bottom ; the reason being, according to Arago, that the current
is slowest there, and the gravel and large stones, having paxted
with much of their heat by radiation, acquire a temperature
below the average of the main body of the river. It is,
therefore, when the water is clear, and the sky free from
clouds, that ground ice forms most readily, and oftener on
pebbly than on muddy bottoms. Fragments of such ice,
rising occasionally to the surface, bring up with them gravel,
and even large stones.
Without dwelling longer on the various ways in which ice
may affect the forms of stratification in drift, so as to
cause bendings and foldings in which the underlying or over-
* Prestwich, Memoir read to Royal Society, April 1862.
140 PROBABLE CAUSES OF ACCUMULATION CHAP. vm.
lying strata do not participate, a subject to which I shall have
occasion again to allude in the sequel, I will state in this
place that such contortions, whether explicable or not, are
very characteristic of glacial formations. They have also no
necessary connection with the transportation of large blocks
of stone, and they therefore afford, as Mr. Prestwich remarks,
independent proof of ice-action in the post-pliocene gravel of
the Somme.
Let us, then, suppose that, at the time when flint hatchets
were embedded in great numbers in the ancient gravel which
now forms the terrace of St. Acheul, the main river and its
tributaries were annually frozen over for several months in
winter. In that case, the primitive people may, as Mr.
Prestwich hints, have resembled in their mode of life those
American Indians who now inhabit the country between
Hudson's Bay and the Polar Sea. The habits of those Indians
have been well described by Hearne, who spent some years
among them. As often as deer and other game become
scarce on the land, they betake themselves to fishing in the
rivers ; and for this purpose, and also to obtain water for
drinking, they are in the constant practice of cutting round
holes in the ice, a foot or more in diameter, through which
they throw baited hooks or nets. Often they pitch their tent
on the ice, and then cut such holes through it, using ice-
chisels of metal when they can get copper or iron, but when
not, employing tools of flint or hornstone.
The great accumulation of gravel at St. Acheul has taken
place in part of the valley where the tributary streams,
the Noye and the Arve, now join the Somme. These tribu
taries,, as well as the main river, must have been running at
the height first of a hundred feet, and afterwards at various
lower levels above the present valley-plain, in those earlier
times when the flint tools of the antique type were buried
in successive river beds. I have said at various levels, be-
CHAP. vni. OF FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN ANCIENT GRAVEL. 141
cause there are, here and there, patches of drift at heights
intermediate between the higher and lower gravel, and also
some deposits, showing that the river once flowed at elevations
above as well as below the level of the platform of St. Aoheul.
As yet, however, no patch of gravel skirting the valley at
heights exceeding one hundred feet above the Somme have
yielded flint tools or other signs of the former sojourn of
man in this region.
Possibly, in the earlier geographical condition of this
country, the confluence of tributaries with the Somme afforded
inducements to a hunting and fishing tribe to settle there,
and some of the same natural advantages may have caused
the first inhabitants of Amiens and Abbeville to fix on the
same sites for their dwellings. If the early hunting and
fishing tribes frequented the same spots for hundreds or
thousands of years in succession, the number of the stone
implements lost in the bed of the river need not surprise us.
Ice-chisels, flint hatchets, and spear -heads may have slipped
accidentally through holes kept constantly open, and the
recovery of a lost treasure once sunk in the bed of the ice
bound stream, inevitably swept away with gravel on the
breaking up of the ice in the spring, would be hopeless.
During a long winter, in a country affording abundance of
flint, the manufacture of tools would be continually in pro
gress ; and, if so, thousands of chips and flakes would be pur
posely thrown into the ice-hole, besides a great number of
implements having flaws, or rejected as too unskilfully made
to be worth preserving.
As to the fossil fauna of the drift, considered in relation to
the climate, when I took a collection which I had made of all the
more common species of land and freshwater shells from the
Amiens and Abbeville drift, to my friend M. Deshayes at Paris,
he declared them to be, without exception, the same as those
now living in the basin of the Seine. This fact may seem at first
142 CLIMATE OF THE LOWER GRAVELS. CHAP. vm.
sight to imply that the climate had not altered since the flint
tools were fabricated ; but it appears that all these species of
mollusks now range as far north as Norway and Finland, and
may therefore have flourished in the valley of the Somme
when the river was frozen over annually in winter.
In regard to the accompanying mammalia, some of them,
like the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros, may have
been able to endure the rigours of a northern winter as well
as the rein-deer, which we find fossil in the same gravel, it
is a more difficult point to determine whether the climate of
the lower gravels (those of Menchecourt, for example) was
more genial than that of the higher ones. Mr. Prestwich
inclines to this opinion. None of those contortions of the
strata above described (p. 138) have as yet been observed in
the lower drift. It contains large blocks of tertiary sandstone
and grit, which may have required the aid of ice to convey
them to their present sites; but as such blocks already
abounded in the older and higher alluvium, they may simply
be monuments of its destruction, having been let down suc
cessively to lower and lower levels without making much
seaward progress.
The Cyrena fluminalis of Menchecourt and the hippo
potamus of St. Eoch seem to be in favour of a less severe
temperature in winter ; but so many of the species of
mammalia, as well as of the land and fresh-water shells, are
common to both formations, and our information respecting
the entire fauna is still so imperfect, that it would be prema
ture to pretend to settle this question in the present state of
our knowledge. We must be content with the conclusion
(and it is one of no small interest), that when man first
inhabited this part of Europe, at the time that the St. Acheul
drift was formed, the climate as well as the physical geography
of the country differed considerably from the state of things
now established there.
CHAP. vm. CAUSES OF EXTINCTION OF MAMMALIA. 143
Among the elephant remains from St. Acheul, in M
Grarnier's collection, Dr. Falconer recognised a molar of the
Elephas antiquus, fig. 19, the same species which has been
already mentioned as having been found in the lower-level
gravels of St. Koch. This species, therefore, endured while
important changes took place in the geographical condition
of the valley of the Somme. Assuming the lower-level
gravel to be the newer, it follows that the Elephas antiquus
and the hippopotamus of St. Eoch continued to flourish long
after the introduction of the mammoth, a well characterized
tooth of which, as I before stated, was found at St. Acheul at
the time of my visit in 1860.
As flint hatchets and knives have been discovered in the
alluvial deposits both at high and low levels, we may safely
affirm that man was as old an inhabitant of this region
as were any of the fossil quadrupeds above enumerated, a
conclusion which is independent of any difference of opinion
as to the relative age of the higher and lower gravels.
The disappearance of many large pachyderms and beasts of
prey from Europe has often been attributed to the inter
vention of man, and no doubt he played his part in hastening
the era of their extinction ; but there is good reason for sus
pecting that other causes cooperated to the same end. No
naturalist would for a moment suppose that the extermination
of the Cyrena fluminalis throughout the whole of Europe
a species which coexisted with our race in the valley of the
Somme, and which was very abundant in the waters of the
Thames at the time when the elephant, rhinoceros, and
hippopotamus flourished on its banks was accelerated by
human agency. The same modification in climate and other
conditions of existence which affected this aquatic mollusk,
may have mainly contributed to the gradual dying out of
many of the large mammalia.
We have already seen that the peat of the valley of the
144 ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES EXPLAINED. CHAP. vm.
Somme is a formation which, in all likelihood, took thousands
of years for its growth. But no change of a marked character
has occurred in the mammalian fauna since it began to ac
cumulate. The contrast of the fauna of the ancient alluvium,
whether at high or low levels, with the fauna of the oldest peat
is almost as great as its contrast with the existing fauna, the
memorials of man being common to the whole series ; hence
we may infer that the interval of time which separated the
era of the large extinct mammalia from that of the earliest
peat, was of far longer duration than that of the entire growth
of the peat. Yet we by no means need the evidence of the
ancient fossil fauna to establish the antiquity of man in this
part of France. The mere volume of the drift at various
heights would alone suffice to demonstrate a vast lapse of
time during which such heaps of shingle, derived both from
the Eocene and the cretaceous rocks, were thrown down
in a succession of river-channels. We observe thousands of
rounded and half-rounded flints, and a vast number of angular
ones, with rounded pieces of white chalk of various sizes,
testifying to a prodigious amount of mechanical action,
accompanying the repeated widening and deepening of the
valley, before it became the receptacle of peat ; and the po
sition of many of the flint tools leaves no doubt on the mind
of the geologist that their fabrication preceded all this
reiterated denudation.
On the Absence of Human Bones in the Alluvium of
the Somme.
It is naturally a matter of no small surprise that, after we
have collected many hundred flint implements (including
knives, many thousands), not a single human bone has yet
been met with in the alluvial sand and gravel of the Somme.
This dearth of the mortal remains of our species holds true
CHAP. VIIT. ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES EXPLAINED. 145
equally, as yet, in all other parts of Europe where the tool-
bearing drift of the post-pliocene period has been investigated
in valley deposits. Yet in these same formations there is no
want of bones of mammalia belonging to extinct and living
species. In the course of the last quarter of a century,
thousands of them have been submitted to the examination
of skilful osteologists, and they have been unable to detect
among them one fragment of a human skeleton, not even a
tooth. Yet Cuvier pointed out long ago, that the bones of
man found buried in ancient battle-fields were not more de
cayed than those of horses interred in the same graves. We
have seen that in the Liege caverns, the skulls, jaws, and teeth,
with other bones of the human race, were preserved in the
same condition as those of the cave-bear, tiger, and mammoth.
That ere long, now that curiosity has been so much excited
on this subject, some human remains will be detected in the
older alluvium of European valleys, I confidently expect. In
the mean time, the absence of all vestige of the bones which
belonged to that population by which so many weapons were
designed and executed, affords a most striking and instructive
lesson in regard to the value of negative evidence, when
adduced in proof of the non-existence of certain classes of
terrestrial animals at given periods of the past. It is a new
and emphatic illustration of the extreme imperfection of
the geological record, of which even they who are constantly
working in the field cannot easily form a just conception.
We must not forget that Dr. Schmerling, after finding
extinct mammalia and flint tools in forty-two Belgian
caverns, was only rewarded by the discovery of human bones
in three or four of those rich repositories of osseous remains.
In like manner, it was not till the year 1855 that the first
skull of the musk buffalo (Bubalus moschatus) was detected
in the fossiliferous gravel of the Thames, and not till 1860,
as will be seen in the next chapter, that the same quadruped
L
146 ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES EXPLAINED. CHAP. vm.
was proved to have co-existed in France with the mammoth.
The same theory which will explain the comparative rarity
of such species would no doubt account for the still greater
scarcity of human bones, as well as for our general ignorance
of the post-pliocene terrestrial fauna, with the exception of
that part of it which is revealed to us by cavern researches.
In valley drift we meet commonly with the bones of quad
rupeds which graze on plains bordering rivers. Carnivorous
beasts, attracted to the same ground in search of their prey,
sometimes leave their remains in the same deposits, but more
rarely. The whole assemblage of fossil quadrupeds at present
obtained from the alluvium of Picardy is obviously a mere
fraction of the entire fauna which flourished contemporane
ously with the primitive people by whom the flint hatchets
were made.
Instead of its being part of the plan of nature to store up
enduring records of a large number of the individual plants and
animals which have lived on the surface, it seems to be her
chief care to provide the means of disencumbering the habit
able areas lying above and below the waters of those myriads
of solid skeletons of animals, and those massive trunks of
trees, which would otherwise soon choke up every river, and
fill every valley. To prevent this inconvenience she employs
the heat and moisture of the sun and atmosphere, the dissolv
ing power of carbonic and other acids, the grinding teeth and
gastric juices of quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, and fish, and the
agency of many of the invertebrata. We are all familiar with
the efficacy of these and other causes on the land ; and as to the
bottoms of seas, we have only to read the published reports of
Mr. MacAndrew, the late Edward Forbes, and other experi
enced dredgers, who, while they failed utterly in drawing
up from the deep a single human bone, declared that they
scarcely ever met with a work of art even after counting tens
of thousands of shells and zoophytes, collected on a coast line
CHAP. vin. HUMAN BONES NOT FOUND IN LAKE OF HAARLEM. 147
of several hundred miles in extent, where they often ap
proached within less than half a mile of a land peopled by
millions of human beings.
Lake of Haarlem.
It is not many years since the Government of Holland re
solved to lay dry that great sheet of water formerly called the
Lake of Haarlem, extending over 45,000 square acres. They
succeeded, in 1853, in turning it into dry land, by means
of powerful pumps constantly worked by steam, which raised
the water and discharged it into a canal running for twenty
or thirty miles round the newly-gained land. This land was
depressed thirteen feet beneath the mean level of the ocean.
I travelled, in 1859, over part of the bed of this old lake,
and found it already converted into arable land, and peopled
by an agricultural population of 5000 souls. Mr. Staring,
who had been for some years employed by the Dutch Grovern-
ment in constructing a geological map of Holland, was my
companion and guide. He informed me that he and his
associates had searched in vain for human bones in the de
posits which had constituted for three centuries the bed of
the great lake.
There had been many a shipwreck, and many a naval fight
in those waters, and hundreds of Dutch and Spanish soldiers
and sailors had met there with a watery grave. The popula
tion which lived on the borders of this ancient sheet of water
numbered between thirty and forty thousand souls. In dig
ging the great canal, a fine section had been laid open, about
thirty miles long, of the deposits which formed the ancient
bottom of the lake. Trenches, also, innumerable, several feet
deep, had been freshly dug on all the farms, and their united
length must have amounted to thousands of miles. In some
of the sandy soil recently thrown out of the trenches, I observed
L 2
148 ABSENCE OF HUMAN BONES EXPLAINED. CHAP. vnr.
specimens of fresh-water and brackish -water shells, such as
Unio and Dreissena, of living species ; and in clay brought up
from below the sand, shells of Tellina, Lutraria, and Cardium,
all of species now inhabiting the adjoining sea.
One or two wrecked Spanish vessels, and arms of the same
period, have rewarded the antiquaries who had been watching
the draining operations in the hope of a richer harvest, and
who were not a little disappointed at the result. In a peaty
tract on the margin of one part of the lake a few coins were
dug up ; but if history had been silent, and if there had been
a controversy whether man was already a denizen of this
planet at the time when the area of the Haarlem lake was
under water, the archaeologist, in order to answer this ques
tion, must have appealed, as in the case of the valley of the
Somme, not to fossil bones, but to works of art embedded in
the superficial strata.
Mr. Staring, in his valuable memoir on the ( Geological Map
of Holland,' has attributed the general scarcity of human
bones in Dutch peat, notwithstanding the many works of art
preserved in it, to the power of the humic and sulphuric
acids to dissolve bones, the peat in question being plenti
fully impregnated with such acids. His theory may be cor
rect, but it is not applicable to the gravel of the Valley of
the Somme, in which the bones of fossil mammalia are fre
quent, nor to the uppermost fresh-water strata forming the
bottom of a large part of the Haarlem Lake, in which it is
not pretended that such acids occur.
The primitive inhabitants of the Valley of the Somme
may have been too wary and sagacious to be often surprised
and drowned by floods, which swept away many an incautious
elephant or rhinoceros, horse and ox. But even if those rude
hunters had cherished a superstitious veneration for the
Somme, and had regarded it as a sacred river (as the modern
Hindoos revere the Granges), and had been in the habit of
CHAP. vni. SCARCITY OF HUMAN BONES. 149
committing the bodies of their dead or dying to its waters
even had such funeral rites prevailed, it by no means fpllows
that the bones of many individuals would have been preserved
to our time.
A corpse cast into the stream first sinks, and must then be
almost immediately overspread with sediment of a certain
weight, or it will rise again when distended with gases, and
float perhaps to the sea before it sinks again. It may then
be attacked by fish of marine species, some of which are
capable of digesting bones. If, before being carried into the
sea and devoured, it is enveloped with fluviatile mud and
sand, the next flood, if it lie in mid channel, may tear it out
again, scatter all the bones, roll some of them into pebbles,
and leave others exposed to destroying agencies ; and this may
be repeated annually, till all vestiges of the skeleton may
disappear. On the other hand, a bone washed through a rent
into a subterranean cavity, even though a rarer contingency,
may have a greater chance of escaping destruction, especially
if there be stalactite dropping from the roof of the cave or
walls of a rent, and if the cave be not constantly traversed
by too strong a current of engulfed water.
150 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN BASIN OF THE SEINE. CHAP. IX.
CHAPTER IX.
WORKS OF AET IN POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF FRANCE AND
ENGLAND.
FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN ANCIENT ALLUVIUM OF THE BASIN OF THE
SEINE BONES OF MAN AND OF EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN THE CAVE OF
ARCY EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN THE VALLEY OF THE OISE FLINT
IMPLEMENT IN GEAVEL OF SAME VALLEY WORKS OF ART IN POST-
PLIOCENE DRIFT IN VALLEY OF THE THAMES MUSK BUFFALO
MEETING OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN FAUNA MIGRATIONS OF
QUADRUPEDS MAMMALS OF AMOOR LAND CHRONOLOGICAL RELA
TION OF THE OLDER ALLUVIUM OF THE THAMES TO THE GLACIAL
DRIFT FLINT IMPLEMENTS OF POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD IN SURREY,
MIDDLESEX, KENT, BEDFORDSHIRE, AND SUFFOLK.
Flint Implements in Post-pliocene Alluvium in the Basin
of the Seine.
IN the ancient alluvium of the valleys of the Seine and its
principal tributaries, the same assemblage of fossil animals,
which has been alluded to in the last chapter as character
ising the gravel of Picardy, has long been known ; but it was
not till the year 1860, and when diligent search had been
expressly made for them, that flint implements of the Amiens
type were discovered in this part of France.
In the neighbourhood of Paris, deposits of drift occur
answering both to those of the higher and lower levels of the
basin of the Somme before described.* In both are found,
mingled with the wreck of the tertiary and cretaceous rocks
of the vicinity, a large quantity of granitic sand, and pebbles,
and occasionally large blocks of granite, from a few inches
* Prestwich, Proceedings of Boy. Soc. 1862.
CHAP. IX. BASIN OF THE SEINE. 151
to a foot or more in diameter. These blocks are peculiarly
abundant in the lower drift commonly called the ' diluvium
The granitic materials are traceable to a chain of hills
called the Morvan, where the head waters of the Yonne take
their rise, 150 miles to the SSE. of Paris.
It was in this lowest gravel that M. H. T. Grosse, of Geneva,
found, in April 1860, in the suburbs of Paris, at La Motte
Piquet, on the left bank of the Seine, one or two well-
formed flint implements of the Amiens type, accompanied
by a great number of ruder tools or attempts at tools. I
visited the spot in 1861 with M. Hebert, and saw the stratum
from which the worked flints had been extracted, twenty feet
below the surface, and near the bottom of the 'grey dilu
vium,' a bed of gravel from which I have myself, in and
near Paris, frequently collected the bones of the elephant,
horse, and other mammalia.
More recently, M. Lartet has discovered at Clichy, in the
environs of Paris, in the same lower gravel, a well-shaped
flint implement of the Amiens type, together with remains
both of Elephas primigenius and E. antiquus. No tools
have yet been met with in any of the gravel occurring at the
higher levels of the valley of the Seine ; but no importance
can be attached to this negative fact, as so little search has
yet been made for them.
Mr. Prestwich has observed contortions indicative of ice-
action, of the same kind as those near Amiens (see p. 138),
in the higher level drift at Charonne, near Paris ; but as yet
no similar derangement has been seen in the lower gravels a
fact, so far as it goes, in unison with the phenomena observed
in Picardy.
In the cavern of Arcy-sur- Yonne a series of deposits have
lately been investigated by the Marquis de Vibraye, who
discovered human bones in the lowest of them, mixed with
remains of quadrupeds of extinct and recent species. This
152 BONES IN THE CAVE OF ARCY. CHAP. ix.
cavern occurs in Jurassic limestone, at a slight elevation
above the Cure, a small tributary of the Yonne, which last
joins the Seine near Fontainebleau, about forty miles south
of Paris. The lowest formation in the cavern resembles the
( diluvium gris ' of Paris, being composed of granitic ma
terials, and like it derived chiefly from the waste of the
crystalline rocks of the Morvan. In it have been found the
two branches of a human lower jaw with teeth well-pre
served, and the bones of the Elephas prim.igenius, Rhinoceros
tichorhinus, Ursus spelceus, Hycena spelcea, and Cervus
Tarandus, all specifically determined by M. Lartet. I have
been shown this collection of fossils by M. de Vibraye, and
remarked that the human and other remains were in the
same condition and of the same colour.
Above the grey gravel is a bed of red alluvium, made up
of fragments of Jura limestone, in a red argillaceous matrix,
in which were embedded several flint knives, with bones of
the reindeer and horse, but no extinct mammalia. Over
this, in a higher bed of alluvium, were several polished
hatchets of the more modern type called f celts,' and above all
loam or cave-mud, in which were Grallo-Eoman antiquities.*
The French geologists have made as yet too little progress
in identifying the age of the successive deposits of ancient
alluvium of various parts of the basin of the Seine, to enable
us to speculate with confidence as to the coincidence in date
of the granitic gravel with human bones of the Grrotte d'Arcy
and the stone- hatchets buried in ' grey diluvium ' of La Motte
Piquet, before mentioned ; but as the associated extinct mam
malia are of the same species in both localities, I feel strongly
inclined to believe that the stone hatchets found by M. Grosse
at Paris, and the human bones discovered by M. de Vibraye,
may be referable to the same period.
* Bulletin de la Societe Greologique de France, 1860.
CHAP. IX. EXTINCT MAMMALIA IN VALLEY OF THE OISE. 153
Valley of the Oise.
A flint hatchet, of the old Abbeville and Amiens type, was
found lately by M. Peigne Delacourt at Precy near Criel, on
the Oise, in gravel, resembling, in its geological position, the
lower-level gravels of Montiers near Arniens, already de
scribed. I visited these extensive gravel-pits in 1861, in
company with Mr. Prestwich; but we remained there too
short a time to entitle us to expect to find a flint implement,
even if they had been as abundant as at St. Acheul.
In 1859, I examined, in a higher part of the same valley
of the Oise, near Chauny and Noyon, some fine railway
cuttings, which passed continuously through alluvium of the
post-pliocene period for half a mile. All this alluvium was
evidently of fluviatile origin, for, in the interstices between
the pebbles, the Ancylus fluviatilis and other freshwater
shells were abundant. My companion, the Abbe E. Lam
bert, had collected from the gravel a great many fossil bones,
among which M. Lartet has recognised both Elephas primi-
genius and E. antiquus, besides a species of hippopotamus
(H. major ?), also the rein-deer, horse, a.nd the musk buffalo
(Bubalus moschatus). The latter seems never to have been
seen before in the old alluvium of France.* Over the
gravel above mentioned, near Chauny, are seen dense masses
of loam like the loess of the Rhine, containing shells of the
genera Helix and Succinea. We may suppose that the gravel
containing the flint hatchet at Precy is of the same age as
that of Chauny, with which it is continuous, and that both of
them are coeval with the tool-bearing beds of Amiens, for the
basins of the Oise and the Somme are only separated by a
narrow water-shed, and the same fossil quadrupeds occur in
both.
* Lartet, Annales des Sciences Naturelles Zoologiques, torn. xv. p. 224.
154 POST-PLIOCENE ALLUYIUM OF ENGLAND. CHAP. IX.
The alluvium of the Seine and its tributaries, like that of
the Somme, contains no fragments of rocks brought from any
other hydrographical basin; yet the shape of the land, or
fall- of the river, or the climate, or all these conditions, must
have been very different when the grey alluvium in which
the flint tools occur at Paris was formed. The great size of
some of the blocks of granite, and the distance which they
have travelled, imply a power in the river which it no longer
possesses. We can scarcely doubt that river-ice once played
a much more active part than now in the transportation of
such blocks, one of which may be seen in the Museum of the
Ecole des Mines at Paris, three or four feet in diameter.
Post-pliocene Alluvium of England, containing Works
of Art.
In the ancient alluvium of the basin of the Thames, at
moderate heights above the main river, and its tributaries,
we find fossil bones of the same species of extinct and living
mammalia, accompanied by recent species, of land and fresh
water shells, as we have shown to be characteristic of the
basins of the Somme and the Seine. We can scarcely therefore
doubt that these quadrupeds, during some part of the post-
pliocene period, ranged freely from the continent of Europe
to England, at a time when there was an uninterrupted
communication by land between the two countries. The
reader will not therefore be surprised to learn that flint
implements of the same antique type as those of the valley
of the Somme have been detected in British alluvium.
The most marked feature of this alluvium in the Thames
valley is that great bed of ochreous gravel, composed chiefly
of broken and slightly worn chalk flints, on which a great
part of London is built. It extends from above Maidenhead
through the metropolis to the sea, a distance from west to east
CHAP. ix. POST-PLIOCENE ALLUVIUM OF ENGLAND. 155
of fifty miles, having a width varying from two to nine miles.
Its thickness ranges commonly from five to fifteen feet.* In-
terstratified with this gravel, in many places, are beds of sand,
loam, and clay, the whole containing occasionally remains of
the mammoth and other extinct quadrupeds. Fine sections
have been exposed to view, at different periods, at Brentford
and Kew Bridge, others in London itself, and below it at
Ilford and Erith in Kent, on the right bank, and at Gray's
Thurrock in Essex, on the left bank. The united thickness
of the beds of sand, gravel, and loam amounts sometimes to
forty or even sixty feet. They are for the most part elevated
above, but in some cases they descend below, the present level
of the overflowed plain of the Thames.
If the reader will refer to the section of the post-pliocene
sands and gravels of Menchecourt, near Abbeville, given at
p. 118, he will perfectly understand the relations of the ancient
Thames alluvium to the modern channel and plain of the
river, and their relation, on the other hand, to the boundary
formations of older date, whether tertiary or cretaceous.
So far as they are known, the fossil mollusca and mammalia
of the two districts also agree very closely, the Cyrenaflumi-
nalis being common to both, and being the only extra-Euro
pean shell, this and all the species of testacea being recent. Of
this agreement with the living fauna there is a fine illustra
tion in Essex ; for the determination of which we are indebted
to the late Mr. John Brown, F.Gr.S., who collected at Cop-
ford, in Essex, from a deposit containing bones of the mam
moth, a large bear (probably Ursus spelceus), a beaver, stag,
and aurochs, no less than sixty-nine species of land and
fresh-water shells. Forty-eight of these were terrestrial, and
two of them, Helix incarnata and H. ruderata, no longer in
habit the British Isles, but are still living on the continent,
* Prestwich, Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. xii. p. 131.
156 MEETING OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN FAUNA. CFAP. IX.
the first in high northern latitudes.* The Cyrena flumi-
nalis and the Unio littoralis, to which last I shall presently
allude, were not among the number.
I long ago suggested the hypothesis, that in the basin of
the Thames there are indications of a meeting in the post-
pliocene period of a northern and southern fauna. To the
northern group may have belonged the mammoth (Elepkas
primigenius) and the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, both of which
Pallas found in Siberia, preserved with their flesh in the ice.
With these are occasionally associated the rein-deer. In 1855
the skull of the musk-ox (Bubalus moschatus) was also found
in the ochreous gravel of Maidenhead, by the Eev. C. Kingsley
and Mr. Lubbock; the identification of this fossil with the
living species being made by Professor Owen. A second fossil
skull of the same arctic animal was afterwards found by
Mr. Lubbock near Bromley, in the valley of a small tribu
tary of the Thames; and two others were dug up at Bath
Easton from the gravel of the valley of the Avon. Professor
Owen has truly said, that, c as this quadruped has a constitu
tion fitting it at present to inhabit the high northern regions
of America, we can hardly doubt that its former companions,
the warmly-clad mammoth and the two-horned woolly rhino
ceros (R. tichorhinus), were in like manner capable of sup
porting life in a cold climate.' f
I have alluded at p. 144 to the recent discovery of this same
buffalo near Chauny, in the valley of the Oise, in France ; and
in 1856 I found a skull of it preserved in the museum at
Berlin, which Professor Quenstedt, the curator, had correctly
named so long ago as 1836, when the fossil was dug out
of drift, in the hill called the Kreuzberg, in the southern
* Quarterly Geological Journal, he merely meant extinct in England,
vol. viii. p. 190, 1852. f Geological Quarterly Journal,
Mr. Brown calls them extinct species, vol. xii. p. 124.
which may mislead some readers, but
CHAP. ix. MIGKATIONS OF QUADKUPEDS. 157
suburbs of that city. By an account published at the time,
we find that the mammalia which accompanied the musk
buffalo were the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros, with the
horse and ox ; * but I can find no record of the occurrence of
a hippopotamus, nor of Elephas antiquus or Rhinoceros
leptorhinus, in the drift of the north of Germany, bordering
the Baltic.
On the other hand, in another locality in the same drift of
North Grermany, Dr. Hensel, of Berlin, detected, near Qued-
linburg, the Norwegian Lemming (Myodes Lemmus), and
another species of the same family called by Pallas Myodes tor-
quatus (by Hensel, Misothermus torquatus) a still more arctic
quadruped, found by Parry in latitude 82, and which never
strays farther south than the northern borders of the woody
region. Professor Beyrich also informs me that the remains of
the Rhinoceros tichorhinus were obtained at the same place.f
As an example of what may possibly have constituted a
more southern fauna in the valley of the Thames, I may
allude to the fossil remains found in the fluviatile alluvium
of Grray's Thurrock, in Essex, situated on the left bank of the
river, twenty-one miles below London. The strata of brick-
earth, loam, and gravel exposed to view in artificial excava
tions in that spot, are precisely such as would be formed by the
silting up of an old river channel. Among the mammalia are
Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros leptorhinus (_R. megarhinus
Christol), Hippopotamus major, species of horse, bear, ox,
stag, &c., and, among the accompanying shells, Cyrenaflumi-
nalis, which is extremely abundant, instead of being scarce,
as at Abbeville. It is associated with Unio littoralis, fig. 22,
also in great numbers, and with both valves united. This
conspicuous fresh-water mussel is no longer an inhabitant of
* Leonhard and Bronn's Jahrbuch, gischen Gesellschaft, vol. vii. 1855,
1836, p. 215. p. 548, &c.
f Zeitschrift der Deutschen Greolo-
158 MAMMALS OF AMOORLAND. CHAP. ix.
the British Isles, but still lives in the Seine, and is still more
abundant in the Loire. Another fresh-water univalve (Palu-
dina marginata Michaud), not British, but common in the
Fig. 22
Unio littoralis. Gray's Thurrock, Essex; extinct in British Isles,
living in France.
south of France, likewise occurs, and a peculiar variety of
Gyclas amnica, which by some naturalists has been regarded
as a distinct species. With these, moreover, is found a peculiar
variety of Valvata piscinalis.
If we consult Dr. Von Schrenck's account of the living
mammalia of Amoorland, lying between lat. 45 and 55 North,
we learn that, in that part of North -Eastern Asia recently
annexed to the Russian empire, no less than thirty-four out
of fifty-eight living quadrupeds are identical with European
species, while some of those which do not extend their range
to Europe are arctic, others tropical forms. The Bengal tiger
ranges northwards occasionally to lat. 52 North, where he
chiefly subsists on the flesh of the rein-deer, and the same
tiger abounds in lat. 48, to which the small tail-less hare or
pika, a polar resident, sometimes wanders southwards.* We
may readily conceive that the countries now drained by the
Thames, the Somme, and the Seine, were, in the post-pliocene
* Mammalia of Amoorland, Natural History Keview, vol. i. p. 12, 1861.
CHAP. IX. CHRONOLOGY OF FLUYIATILE DEPOSITS. 159
period, on the borders of two distinct zoological provinces,
one lying to the north, the other to the south, in which case
many species belonging to each fauna endowed with migra
tory habits, like the living musk-buffalo or the Bengal tiger,
may have been ready to take advantage of any, even the
slightest, change in their favour to invade the neighbouring
province, whether in the summer or winter months, or
permanently for a series of years, or centuries. The Elephas
antiquus and its associated Rhinoceros leptorhinus may
have preceded the mammoth and tichorhine rhinoceros in the
valley of the Thames, or both may have alternately prevailed
in the same area in the post-pliocene period.
In attempting to settle the chronology of fluviatile deposits,
it is almost equally difficult to avail ourselves of the evidence
of organic remains and of the superposition of the strata,
for we may find two old river-beds on the same level in
juxta-position, one of them perhaps many thousands of years
posterior in date to the other. I have seen an example of
this at Ilford, where the Thames, or a tributary stream,
has at some former period cut through sands containing
Cyrena fluminalis, and again filled up the channel with
argillaceous matter, evidently derived from the waste of the
tertiary London clay. Such shiftings of the site of the main
channel of the river, the frequent removal of gravel and sand
previously deposited, and the throwing down of new alluvium,
the flooding of tributaries, the rising and sinking of the land,
fluctuations in the cold and heat of the climate all these
changes seem to have given rise to that complexity in the
fluviatile deposits of the Thames, which accounts for the small
progress we have hitherto made in determining their order of
succession, and that of the imbedded groups of quadrupeds.
It may happen, as at Brentford and Ilford, that sand-pits in
two adjoining fields may each contain distinct species of
elephant and rhinoceros ; and they may occur at the same
160 CHRONOLOGY OF FLTJVIATILE DEPOSITS. CHAP. ix.
depth from the surface, and yet be referable each to two sub
divisions of the post-pliocene epoch, separated by thousands
of years.
The relation of the glacial period to alluvial deposits, such as
that of Gray's Thurrock, where the Cyrena fluminalis, Unio
littoralisy and the hippopotamus seem rather to imply a warmer
climate, has been a matter of long and animated discussion.
Patches of the northern drift, at elevations of about two
hundred feet above the Thames, occur in the neighbourhood
of London, as at Muswell Hill, near Highgate. In this drift,
blocks of granite, syenite, greenstone, coal-measure sandstone
with its fossils, and other paleozoic rocks, and the wreck of
chalk and oolite, occur confusedly mixed together. The same
glacial formation is also found capping some of the Essex hills
farther to the east, and extending some way down their
southern slopes towards the valley of the Thames. Although
no fragments washed out of these older and upland drifts
have been found in the gravel of the Thames containing
elephants' bones, it is fair to presume that the glacial formation
is the older of the two, for reasons given before at p. 130,
and that it originated, as we shall see in a future chapter, when
the greater part of England was submerged beneath the sea.
In short, we must suppose that the basin of the Thames and
all its fluviatile deposits are post-glacial, in the modified sense
of that term ; i. e. that they were subsequent to the marine
drift of the central and northern counties, and to the period
of its emergence above the level of the sea.
Having offered these general remarks on the alluvium of
the Thames, I may now say something of the implements
hitherto discovered in it. In the British Museum there is a
flint weapon of the spear-headed form, such as is represented in
fig. 8, p. 114, which we are told was found with an elephant's
tooth at Black Mary's, near Gray's Inn Lane, London. In
a letter dated 1715, printed in Herne's edition of 'Leland's
CHAP. IX. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN MIDDLESEX AND SURREY. 161
Collectanea,' vol. i. p. 73, it is stated to have been found in the
presence of Mr. Conyers, with the skeleton of an elephant.*
So many bones of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus
have been found in the gravel on which London stands, that
there is no reason to doubt the statement as handed down to
us. Fossil remains of all these three genera have been dug
up on the site of Waterloo Place, St. James's Square, Charing
Cross, the London Docks, Limehouse, Bethnal Green, and
other places within the memory of persons now living.
In the gravel and sand of Shacklewell, in the northern
suburbs of London, I have myself collected specimens of
the Cyrena fluminalis in great numbers, see fig. 17 c, p. 124,
with the bones of deer and other mammalia.
In the alluvium also of the Wey, near Gruildford, in a
place called Pease Marsh, a wedge-shaped flint implement,
resembling one brought from St. Acheul, by Mr. Prestwich,
and compared by some antiquaries to a sling-stone, was ob
tained in 1836 by Mr. Whitburn, four feet deep in sand and
gravel, in which the teeth and tusks of elephants had been
found. The Wey flows through the gorge of the North
Downs at Gruildford to join the Thames. Mr. Austen has
shown that this drift is so ancient that one part of it had been
disturbed and tilted before another part was thrown down.f
Among other places where flint tools of the antique type
have been met with in the course of the last three years, I
may mention one of an oval form found by Mr. Evans in
the valley of the Darent, and another which the same observer
found lying on the shore at Swalecliff, near Whitstable, in
Kent, where Mr. Prestwich had previously described a fresh
water deposit, resting on the London clay, and consisting
chiefly of gravel, in which an elephant's tooth and the bones
of a bear were embedded. The, flint implement was deeply
* Evans, Archseologia, 1860.
f Quarterly Geological Journal, 1851, vol. vii. p. 278.
M
162 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN KENT. CHAP. TX.
discoloured and of a peculiar bright light brown colour, similar
to that of the old fluviatile gravel in the cliff.
Another flint implement was found in 1860, by Mr. T.
Leech, at the foot of the cliff between Herne Bay and the
Eeculvers, and on further search five other specimens of the
spear-head pattern so common at Amiens. Messrs. Prestwich
and Evans have since found three other similar tools on the
beach, at the base of the same wasting cliff, which consists of
sandy Eocene strata. Upon these, at the top of the cliff, is a
pebbly deposit of fresh-water origin, about fifty feet above
the sea-level, from which the flint weapons must have been
derived. Such old alluvial deposits now capping the cliffs of
Kent seem to have been the river-beds of tributaries of the
Thames before the sea encroached to its present position and
widened its estuary. On following up one of these fresh-water
deposits westward of the Eeculvers, Mr. Prestwich found in it,
at Chislet, near Grove Ferry, the Cyrena fluminalis among
other shells.
The changes which have taken place in the physical geo
graphy of this part of England during, or since, the post-
pliocene period, have consisted partly of such encroachments
of the sea on the coast as are now going on, and partly of a
general subsidence of the land. Among the signs of the
latter movement may be mentioned a fresh-water formation
at Faversham, below the level of the sea. The gravel there
contains exclusively land and fluviatile shells, of the same
species as those of other localities of the post-pliocene allu
vium before mentioned, and must have been formed when
the river was at a higher level and when it extended farther
east. At that era it was probably a tributary of the Ehine,
as represented by Mr. Trimmer in his ideal restoration of the
geography of the olden time.* For England was then united
to the continent, and what is now the German Ocean was
* Quarterly Geological Journal, vol. ix. pi. 13, No. 4.
CHAP. IX. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN BEDFORDSHIRE. 163
land. It is well known that in many places, especially near
the coast of Holland, elephants' tusks and other bones are
often dredged up from the bed of that shallow sea, and the
reader will see in the map given in Chap. XIII. how vast would
be the conversion of sea into land by an upheaval of 600 feet.
Vertical movements of much less than half that amount would
account for the annexation of England to the continent, and
the extension of the Thames and its valley far to the north
east, and the flowing of rivers from the easternmost parts of
Kent and Essex into the Thames, instead of emptying them
selves into its estuary.
More than a dozen flint weapons of the Amiens type have
already been found in the basin of the Thames; but the
geological position of no one of them has as yet been ascer
tained with the same accuracy as that of many of the tools
dug up in the valley of the Somme, or some other British
examples which will presently be mentioned.
Flint Implements of the Valley of the Ouse, near Bedford.
The ancient fluviatile gravel of the valley of the Ouse,
around Bedford, has been noted for the last thirty years for
yielding to collectors a rich harvest of the bones of extinct
mammalia ; those of the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopo
tamus being amongst the number. Mr. James Wyatt, F.Gr.S.,
having returned in 1860 from France, where, in the gravel-
pits of St. Acheul, near Amiens, he had marked the position
of the flint tools, resolved to watch carefully the excavation of
the gravel-pits at Biddenham, two miles WNW. of Bedford,
in the hope of finding there similar works of art. With this
view he paid almost daily visits for months in succession to
those pits, and was at last rewarded by the discovery of two
well-formed implements, one of the spear-head and the other
of the oval shape, perfect counterparts of the two prevailing
164 SECTION ACROSS THE VALLEY OF THE OUSE. CHAP. ix.
French types figured at pp. 114, 115. Both specimens were
thrown out by the workmen on the same day from the lowest
bed of stratified gravel and sand, thirteen feet thick, containing
bones of the elephant, deer, and ox, and many fresh-water
shells. The two implements occurred at the depth of thirteen
feet from the surface of the soil, and rested immediately on
solid beds of oolitic limestone, as represented in the accom
panying section.
Fig. 23
Section across the Valley of the Ouse, two miles WNW. of Bedford.
1 Oolitic strata.
2 Boulder clay, or marine northern drift, rising to about ninety feet
above the Ouse.
3 Ancient gravel, with elephant bones, freshwater shells, and flint im
plements.
4 Modern alluvium of the Ouse.
a Biddenham gravel pits, at the bottom of which flint tools were
found.
I examined these pits, in 1861, in company with Messrs.
Prestwich, Evans, and Wyatt, and we collected ten species of
shells from the stratified drift No. 3, or the beds overlying
the lowest gravel from which the flint implements had been
exhumed. They were all of common fluviatile and land
species now living in the same part of England. Since our
visit, Mr. Wyatt has added to them Paludina marginata
Michaud (Hydrobia of some authors, see p. 225 infra), species
of the South of France no longer inhabiting the British Isles.
The same geologist has also found, since we were at Bidden-
, ham, several other flint tools of corresponding type, both there
and at other localities in the Valley of the Ouse, near Bedford.
The boulder clay, No. 2, extends for miles in all directions,
and was evidently once continuous from b to c, before the
CHAP. IX. FLINT TOOLS NEAK BEDFOKD. 165
valley was scooped out. It is a portion of the great marine
glacial drift of the midland counties of England, and contains
blocks, some of large size, not only of the oolite of the neigh
bourhood, but of chalk and other rocks transported from still
greater distances, such as syenite, basalt, quartz, and new red
sandstone. These erratic blocks of foreign origin are often
polished and striated, having undergone what is called
glaciation, of which more will be said by and by. Blocks
of the same mineral character, embedded at Biddenham
in the gravel No. 3, have lost all signs of this striation by
the friction to which they were subjected in the old river-bed.
The great width of the valley of the Ouse, which is some
times two miles, has not been expressed in the diagram. It
may have been shaped out by the joint action of the river and
the tides when this part of England was emerging from the
waters of the glacial sea, the boulder clay being first cut
through, and then an equal thickness of underlying oolite.
After this denudation, which may have accompanied the
emergence of the land, the country was inhabited by the
primitive people who fashioned the flint tools. The
old river, aided perhaps by the continued upheaval of the
whole country, or by oscillations in its level, went on
widening and deepening the valley, often shifting its channel,
until at length a broad area was covered by a succession
of the earliest and latest deposits, which may have cor
responded in age to the higher and lower gravels of the valley
of the Somme, already described, p. 130. Mr. Prestwich
has hinted that perhaps the drift of Biddenham, which is
thirty feet above the present level of the Ouse, and contains
bones of Elephas primigenius, and the shells above alluded
to, may be a higher level alluvium ; and the gravel on which,
the town of Bedford is built, which is at an inferior level
relatively to the Ouse, may be a lower deposit and con
sequently newer. But we have scarcely as yet sufficient data
166 ANCIENT FLINT IMPLEMENTS CHAP. ix.
to enable us to determine the relative age of these strata. In
the Bedford gravel, last alluded to, some remains of Hippopo
tamus major and Elephas antiquus have been discovered,
and an assemblage of land and freshwater shells of recent
species, but not precisely the same as those of Biddenham.
One step at least we gain by the Bedford sections, which
those of Amiens and Abbeville had not enabled us to make.
They teach us that the fabricators of the antique tools, and
the extinct mammalia coeval with them, were all post-glacial,
or, in other words, posterior to the grand submergence of
Central England beneath the waters of the glacial sea.
Flint Implements in a Freshwater Deposit at Hoxne in
Suffolk.
So early as the first year of the present century, a re
markable paper was communicated to the Society of An
tiquaries by Mr. John Frere, in which he gave a clear
description of the discovery at Hoxne, near Diss, in Suffolk,
of flint tools of the type since found at Amiens, adding at the
same time good geological reasons for presuming that their an
tiquity was very great, or, as he expressed it, beyond that of
the present world, meaning the actual state of the physical
geography of that region. ( The flints,' he said, ' were
evidently weapons of war, fabricated and used by a people
who had not the use of metals. They lay in great numbers at
the depth of about twelve feet in a stratified soil which was dug
into for the purpose of raising clay for bricks. Under a foot
and a half of vegetable earth was clay seven and a half feet
thick, and beneath this one foot of sand with shells, and under
, this two feet of gravel, in which the shaped flints were found
generally at the rate of five or six in a square yard. In the
sandy beds with shells were found the jaw bone and teeth of
an enormous unknown animal. The manner in which the
CHAP. ix. AT HOXNE, NEAR DISS, SUFFOLK. 167
flint weapons lay would lead to the persuasion that it was a
place of their manufacture, and not of their accidental de
posit. Their numbers were so great that the man who carried
on the brick- work told me that before he was aware of their
being objects of curiosity, he had emptied baskets full of them
into the ruts of the adjoining road.'
Mr. Frere then goes on to explain that the strata in which
the flints occur are disposed horizontally, and do not lie at the
foot of any higher ground, so that portions of them must have
been removed when the adjoining valley was hollowed out.
If the author had not mistaken the freshwater shells associated
with the tools for marine species, there would have been
nothing to correct in his account of the geology of the dis
trict, for he distinctly perceived that the strata in which the
implements were embedded had, since that time, undergone
very extensive denudation.* Specimens of the flint spear
heads, sent to London by Mr. Frere, are still preserved in the
British Museum, and others are in the collection of the Society
of Antiquaries.
Mr. Prestwich's attention was called by Mr. Evans to those
weapons, as well as to Mr. Frere's memoir after his return
from Amiens in 1859, and he lost no time in visiting Hoxne,
a village five miles eastward of Diss. It is not a little re
markable that he should have found, after a lapse of sixty
years, that the extraction of clay was still going on in the
same brick-pit. Only a few months before his arrival, two
flint instruments had been dug out of the clay, one from a
depth of seven and the other of ten feet from the surface.
Others have since been disinterred from undisturbed beds of
gravel in the same pit. Mr. Amyot, of Diss, has also obtained
from the underlying freshwater strata the astragalus of an
elephant, and bones of the deer and horse ; but although
many of the old implements have recently been discovered
* Frere, Archseologia for 1800, vol. xiii. p. 206.
168 FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN SUFFOLK. CHAP. ix.
in situ in regular strata and preserved by Sir Edward Kerrison,
no bones of extinct mammalia seem as yet to have been
actually seen in the same stratum with one of the tools.
By reference to the annexed section, the geologist will see
that the basin-shaped hollow a, b, c, has been filled up gradually
with the fresh- water strata 3, 4, 5, after the same cavity a, 6, c,
had been previously excavated out of the more ancient boulder
clay, No. 6. The relative position of these formations will be
better understood when I have described in the Twelfth
Fig. 24
farm
Sea, Level 9 Chalk
Section showing the position of the flint weapons at Hoxne, near Diss, Suffolk.
See Prestwich, Philosophical Transactions, PI. 11. 1860.
1 Gravel of Gold Brook, a tributary of the "Waveny.
2 Higher-level gravel overlying the freshwater deposit.
3 and 4. Sand and gravel, with freshwater shells, and flint imple
ments, and bones of mammalia.
5 Peaty and clayey beds, with same fossils.
6 Boulder clay or glacial drift.
7 Sand and gravel below boulder clay.
8 Chalk with flints.
Chapter the structure of Norfolk and Suffolk as laid open in
the sea-cliffs at Mundesley, about thirty miles distant from
Hoxne, in a North North-east direction.
I examined the deposits at Hoxne in 1860, when I had
the advantage of being accompanied by the Rev. J. GKmn, and
the Rev. S. W. King. In the loamy beds 3 and 4, fig. 24,
we observed the common river shell Valvata piscinalis in
great numbers. With it, but much more rare, were Limnea
palustris, Planorbis albus, P. spirorbis, Succinea putris,
Bithynia tentaculata, Cyclas cornea; and Mr. Prestwich
mentions Cyclas amnica and fragments of a Unio, besides
CHAP. ix. FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN SUFFOLK. 169
several land shells. In the black peaty mass No. 5, fragments
of wood of the oak, yew, and fir have been recognised. The
flint weapons which I have seen from Hoxne are so much
more perfect, and have their cutting edge so much sharper
than those from the Valley of the Somme, that they seem
neither to have been used by man, nor to have been rolled in
the bed of a river. The opinion of Mr. Frere, therefore, that
there may have been a manufactory of weapons on the spot,
appears probable.
Flint Implements at Icklingham in Suffolk.
In another part of Suffolk, at Icklingham, in the Valley of
the Lark, below Bury St. Edmund's, there is a bed of gravel,
in which two flints of a lance-head form have been found
at the depth of four feet from the surface. I have visited
the spot, which has been correctly described by Mr. Prestwich.*
The section of the Bedford tool-bearing alluvium, given at
p. 155, may serve to illustrate that of Icklingham, if we sub
stitute chalk for oolite, and the river Lark for the Ouse. In
both cases, the present bed of the river is about thirty feet
below the level of the old gravel, and the chalk hill, which
bounds the Valley of the Lark on the right side, is capped
like the oolite of Biddenham by boulder clay, which rises to
the height of one hundred feet above the Lark. About
twelve years ago, a large erratic block, above four feet in
diameter, was dug out of the boulder clay at Icklingham,
which I found to consist of a hard siliceous schist, apparently
a Silurian rock, which must have come from a remote region.
The tool-bearing gravel here, as in the case to which it has
been compared near Bedford, is proved to be newer than the
glacial drift, by containing pebbles of basalt and other rocks
derived from that formation.
* Quarterly Geological Journal, 1861, vol. xvii. p. 364.
170 FOSSIL WORKS OF ART IN SOMERSETSHIRE. CHAP. x.
CHAPTEE X.
CAVERN DEPOSITS, AND PLACE OF SEPULTURE OF THE POST-
PLIOCENE PERIOD.
FLINT IMPLEMENTS IN CAVE CONTAINING HYJENA AND OTHEE EXTINCT
MAMMALIA IN SOMERSETSHIRE CAVES OF THE GOWER PENINSULA IN
SOUTH WALES RHINOCEROS HEMITO3CHUS OSSIFEROUS CAVES NEAR
PALERMO SICILY ONCE PART OF AFRICA RISE OF BED OF THE
MEDITERRANEAN TO THE HEIGHT OF THREE HUNDRED FEET IN THE
HUMAN PERIOD IN SARDINIA BURIAL PLACE OF POST-PLIOCENE DATE
OF AURIGNAC IN THE SOUTH OF FRANCE RHINOCEROS TICHORHINUS
EATEN BY MAN M. LARTET ON EXTINCT MAMMALIA AND WORKS OF
ART FOUND IN THE AURIGNAC CAVE RELATIVE ANTIQUITY OF THE
SAME, CONSIDERED.
Works of Art associated with extinct Mammalia in a
Cavern in Somersetshire.
THE only British cave from which implements resembling
those of Amiens have been obtained, since the attention
of geologists has been awakened to the importance of minutely
observing the position of such relics relatively to the asso
ciated fossil mammalia, is that recently opened near Wells in
Somersetshire. It occurs near the cave of Wokey Hole, from
the mouth of which the river Axe issues on the southern
flanks of the Mendips. No one had suspected that on the left
side of the ravine, through which the river flows after escaping
from its subterranean channel, there were other caves and
fissures concealed beneath the green sward of the steep
sloping bank. About ten years ago, a canal was made,
several hundred yards in length, for the purpose of leading
the waters of the Axe to a paper-mill, now occupying the
middle of the ravine. In carrying out this work, about
twelve feet of the left bank was cut away, and a cavernous
CHAP. x. FOSSIL WOKKS OF ART IN SOMERSETSHIRE. 171
fissure, choked up to the roof with ossiferous loam, was then,
for the first time, exposed to view. This great cavity, origi
nally nine feet high and thirty-six wide, traversed the
dolomitic conglomerate ; and fragments of that rock, some
angular and others water-worn, were scattered through the
red mud of the cave, in which fossil remains were abundant.
For an account of them and the position they occupied we
are indebted to Mr. Dawkins, F.Gr.S., who, in company with
Mr. Williamson, explored the cavern in 1859, and obtained
from it the bones of the Hycena spelcea in such numbers as to
lead him to conclude that the cavern had for a long time been
a hyaena's den. Among the accompanying animals found fossil
in the same bone-earth, were observed Elephas primigenius,
Rhinoceros tichorhinus, Ursus spelceus, Bos primigenius,
Megaceros hybernicus, Cervus Tarandus (and other species
of Cervus), Ursus spelceus., Felis spelcea, Canis Lupus, Canis
Vulpes, and teeth and bones of the genus Equus in great
numbers.
Intermixed with the above fossil bones were some arrow
heads, made of bone, and many chipped flints, and chipped
pieces of chert, a white or bleached flint weapon of the
spear-head Amiens type, which was taken out of the undis
turbed matrix by Mr. Williamson himself, together with a
hyaena's tooth, showing that man had either been contempo
raneous with or had preceded the extinct fauna. After
penetrating thirty-four feet from the entrance, Mr. Dawkins
found the cave bifurcating into two branches, one of which
was vertical. By this rent, perhaps, some part of the contents
of the cave may have been introduced.*
When I examined the spot in 1860, after I had been shown
some remains of the hyaena collected there, I felt convinced
that a complete revolution must have taken place in the
* W. B. Dawkins, F.G.S., Geological Society's Proceedings, January 1862.
172 OSSIFEROUS CAYES IN SOUTH WALES. CHAP. x.
topography of the district since the time of the extinct
quadrupeds. I was not aware at the time that flint tools
had been met with in the same bone-deposit.
Caves of Gower in Glamorganshire, South Wales.
The ossiferous caves of the peninsula of Grower in Gla
morganshire have been diligently explored of late years by
Dr. Falconer and Lieutenant-Colonel E. K. Wood, the latter
of whom has discovered and thoroughly investigated the con
tents of many which were previously unknown. Among
their contents have been found the remains of almost every
quadruped elsewhere found fossil in British caves : in some
places the JElephas primigenius, accompanied by its usual
companion the Rhinoceros tichorhinus, in others Elephas
antiquus associated with Rhinoceros hemitoschus Falconer ;
the extinct animals being often embedded, as in the Belgian
caves, in the same matrix with species now living in Europe,
such as the common badger (Melee taxus), the common wolf,
and the fox.
In a cavernous fissure called the Raven's cliff, teeth of
several individuals of Hippopotamus major, both young and
old, were found ; and this in a district where there is now
scarce a rill of running water, much less a river in which such
quadrupeds could swim. In one of the caves, called Spritsail
Tor, both of the elephants above named were observed,
with a great many other quadrupeds of recent and extinct
species.
From one fissure, called Bosco's Den, no less than one thou
sand antlers of the rein-deer, chiefly of the variety called
Cervus Guettardi, were extracted by the persevering ex
ertions of Colonel Wood, who estimated that several hundred
more still remained in the bone-earth of the same rent.
They were mostly shed horns, and of young animals ; and
CHAP. x. RHINOCEROS HEMITCECHUS COEXISTENT WITH MAN. 173
had been washed into the rent with other bones, and with
angular fragments of limestone, and all enveloped in the same
ochreous rnud. Among the other bones, which were not
numerous, were those of the cave-bear, wolf, fox, ox, stag,
and field-mouse.
But the discovery of most importance, as bearing on the
subject of the present work, is the occurrence in a newly-
discovered cave, called Long Hole, by Colonel Wood, in 1861,
of the remains of two species of rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus and
R. hemitoechus Falconer, in an undisturbed deposit, in the
lower part of which were some well-shaped flint knives,
evidently of human workmanship. It is clear from their po
sition that man was coeval with these two species. We have
elsewhere independent proofs of his coexistence with every
other species of the cave-fauna of Glamorganshire ; but this
is the first well-authenticated example of the occurrence of
R. hemitoechus in connection with human implements.
In the fossil fauna of the valley of the Thames, Rhinoceros
leptorhinus was mentioned as occurring at Gray's Thurrock
with Elephas antiquus. Dr. Falconer, in a memoir which
he is now preparing for the press on the European pliocene
and post-pliocene species of the genus Rhinoceros, has shown
that, under the above name of R. leptorhinus, three distinct
species have been confounded by Cuvier, Owen, and other
palaeontologists :
1. R. Megarhinus Christol, being the original and typical
R. leptorhinus of Cuvier, founded on Cortesi's Monte Zago
cranium, and the only pliocene, or post-pliocene European
species, that had not a nasal septum. Gray's Thurrock, &c.
2. R. hemitoechus Falconer, in which the ossification of the
septum dividing the nostrils is incomplete in the middle,
besides other cranial and dental characters distinguishing it
from R. tichorhinus, accompanies Elephas antiquus in most
of the oldest British bone-caves, such as Kirkdale, Cefn,
174 OSSIFEEOUS CAVES IN SICILY. CHAP. x.
Durdham Down, Minchin Hole, and other Grower caverns
also found at Clacton, in Essex, and in Northamptonshire.
3. R. etruscus Falconer, a comparatively slight and slender
form, also with an incomplete bony septum,* occurs deep
in the Val d'Arno deposits, and in the 'Forest bed,' and
superimposed blue clays, with lignite, of the Norfolk coast,
but nowhere as yet found in the ossiferous caves in Britain.
Dr. Falconer announced in 1859 his opinion that the
filling up of the Grower caves in South Wales took place after
the deposition of the marine boulder clay,f an opinion in
harmony with what we have since learnt from the section of
the gravels near Bedford, given above at p. 155, where a
fauna corresponding to that of the Welsh caves characterises
the ancient alluvium, and is shown to be clearly post-glacial,
in the sense of being posterior in date to the submergence of
the midland counties beneath the waters of the glacial sea.
The Grower caves in general have their floors strewed over
with sand, containing marine shells, all of living species ; and
there are raised beaches on the adjoining coast, and other
geological signs of great alteration in the relative level of
land and sea, since that country was inhabited by the extinct
mammalia, some of which, as we have seen, were certainly
coeval with man.
Ossiferous Caves in North of Sicily.
Greologists have long been familiar with the fact that on
the northern coast of Sicily, between Termini on the east, and
Trapani on the west, there are many caves containing the
bones of extinct animals. These caves are situated in rocks
of hippurite limestone, a member of the cretaceous series, and
some of them may be seen on both sides of the Bay of
* See Falconer, Quarterly Geolo- f Geological Quarterly Journal,
gical Journal, vol. xv. p. 602. vol. xvi. p. 491, 1860.
CHAP. x. OSSIFEROUS GATES IN SICILY. 175
Palermo. If in the neighbourhood of that city we proceed
from the sea inland, ascending a sloping terrace, composed of
the marine Newer Pliocene strata, we reach about a mile from
the shore, and at the height of about one hundred and eighty
feet above it. a precipice of limestone, at the base of which
appear the entrances of several caves. In that of San Giro,
on the east side of the bay, we find at the bottom sand with
marine shells, forty species of which have been examined, and
found almost all to agree specifically with mollusca now
inhabiting the Mediterranean. Higher in position, and
resting on the sand, is a breccia, composed of pieces of
limestone, quartz, and schist in a matrix of brown marl,
through which land shells are dispersed, together with
bones of. two species of hippopotamus, as determined by
Dr. Falconer. Certain bones of the skeleton were counted in
such numbers as to prove that they must have belonged to
several hundred individuals. With these were associated the
remains of Elephas antiquus, and bones of the genera Bos,
Cervus, Sus, Ursus, Canis, and a large Felis. Some of these
bones have been rolled as if partially subjected to the action
of water, and may have been introduced by streams through
rents in the hippurite limestone ; but there is now no
running water in the neighbourhood, no river such as the
hippopotamus might frequent, not even a small brook, so that
the physical geography of the district must have been alto
gether changed since the time when such remains were swept
into fissures, or into the channels of engulfed rivers.
No proofs seem yet to have been found of the existence of
man at the period when the hippopotamus and Elephas an-
tiquus flourished at San Giro. But there is another cave
called the -Grotto di Maccagnone, which much resembles it
in geological position, on the opposite or west side of the Bay
of Palermo, near Carini. In the bottom of this cave a bone
deposit like that of San Giro occurs, and above it other
176 OSSIFEROUS CAVES IN SICILY. CHAP. x.
materials reaching to the roof, and evidently washed in from
above, through crevices in the limestone. In this upper and
newer breccia Dr. Falconer discovered flint knives, bone
splinters, bits of charcoal, burnt clay, and other objects in
dicating human intervention, mingled with entire land shells,
teeth of horses, coprolites of hyaenas, and other bones, the
whole agglutinated to one another and to the roof by the
infiltration of water holding lime in solution. The perfect
condition of the large fragile helices (Helix vermiculatci)
afforded satisfactory evidence, says Dr. Falconer, that the
various articles were carried into the cave by the tranquil
agency of water, and not by any tumultuous action. At a
subsequent period other geographical changes took place, so
that the cave, after it had been filled, was washed out again,
or emptied of its contents with the exception of those patches
of breccia which, being cemented together by stalactite, still
adhere to the roof.*
Baron Anca, following up these investigations, explored, in
1859, another cave at Mondello, west of Palermo, and north
of Mount Grallo, where he discovered molars of the living
African elephant, and afterwards additional specimens of the
same species in the neighbouring grotto of Olivella, In re
ference to this elephant, Dr. Falconer has reminded us that
the distance between the nearest part of Sicily and the coast
of Africa, between Marsala and Cape Bon, is not more than
eighty miles, and Admiral Smyth, in his Memoir on the
Mediterranean, states (p. 499) that there is a subaqueous
plateau, named by him Adventure Bank, uniting Sicily to
Africa by a succession of ridges which are not more than
from forty to fifty fathoms under water.f Sicily therefore
might be re-united to Africa by movements of upheaval not
* Note, Quarterly Geological Journal, dent of Geological Society, Anni-
yol. xvi. p. 105, 1860. versary Address, February 1861,
t Note, Cited by Mr. Horner, Presi- p. 42.
CHAP. x. UPRAISED BED OF THE SARDINIAN SEA. 177
greater than those which are already known to have taken
place within the human period on the borders of the Mediter
ranean, of which I shall now proceed to cite a well-authen
ticated example, observed in Sardinia.
Rise of the Bed of the Sea to the Height of 300 Feet, in the
Human Period, in Sardinia.
Count Albert de la Marmora, in his description of the geo
logy of Sardinia, * has shown that on the southern coast of
that island, at Cagliari and in the neighbourhood, an ancient
bed of the sea, containing marine shells of living species, and
numerous fragments of antique pottery, has been elevated
to the height of from seventy to ninety-eight metres above
the present level of the Mediterranean. Oysters and other
shells, of which a careful list has been published, including
the common mussel (Mytilus edulis), many of them having
both valves united, occur, embedded in a breccia in which
fragments of limestone abound. The mussels are often in
such numbers as to impart, when they have decomposed,
a violet colour to the marine stratum. Besides pieces of
coarse pottery, a flattened ball of baked earthenware, with a
hole through its axis, was found in the midst of the marine
shells. It is supposed to have been used for weighting a fish
ing net. Of this and of one of the fragments of ancient
pottery Count de la Marmora has given figures.
The upraised bed of the sea probably belongs in this in
stance to the post-pliocene period, for in a bone breccia, filling
fissures in the rocks around Cagliari, the remains of extinct
mammalia have been detected ; among which is a new genus
of carnivorous quadruped, named Cynotherium by M. Studiati,
and figured by Count de la Marmora in his Atlas (pi. vii.), also
an extinct species of Lagomys, determined by Cuvier in 1825
* Partie Geologique, torn. i. pp. 382, 387.
N
J78 CLIMATE AND HABITS OP THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. CHAP. x.
Embedded in the same bone breccia, and enveloped with red
earth like the mammalian remains, were detected shells of
the Mytilus edulis before mentioned, implying that the
marine formation containing shells and pottery had been
already upheaved and exposed to denudation before the
remains of quadrupeds were washed into these rents and
included in the red earth. In the vegetable soil covering the
upraised marine stratum, with the older works of art, frag
ments of Eoman pottery occur.
If we assume the average rate of upheaval to have been, as
before hinted, p. 58, two and a half feet in a century, 300 feet
would give an antiquity of 12,000 years to the Cagliari pot
tery, even if we simply confine our estimate to the upheaval
above the sea-level, without allowing for the original depth of
water in which the mollusca lived. Even then our calculation
would merely embrace the period during which the upward
movement was going on ; and we can form at present no con-
jecture as to the probable era of its commencement or termi
nation.
I learn from Capt. Spratt, E.N., that the island of Crete
or Candia, about 135 miles in length, has been raised at its
western extremity about twenty-five feet ; so that ancient ports
are now high and dry above the sea, while at its eastern end it
has sunk so much that the ruins of old towns are seen under
water. Revolutions like these in the physical geography of the
countries bordering the Mediterranean, may well help us to
understand the phenomena of the Palermo caves, and the
presence in Sicily of African species of mammalia.
Climate and Habits of the Hippopotamus.
As I have alluded more than once in this chapter (pp. 172,
175) to the occurrence of the remains of the hippopotamus
in places where there are now no rivers, not even a rill of
water, and as other bones of the same genus have been met
CHAP. x. CLIMATE AND HABITS OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. 179
with in the lower level gravels of the Somme (p. 134), where
large blocks of sandstone seem to imply that ice once played a
part in their transportation, it may be well to consider, before
proceeding farther, what geographical and climatal conditions
are indicated by the presence of these fossil pachyderms.
It is now very generally conceded that the mammoth and
tichorhine rhinoceros were fitted to inhabit northern regions,
and it is therefore natural to begin by asking whether the
extinct hippopotamus may not in like manner have flourished
in a cold climate. In answer to this enquiry, it has been
remarked, that the living hippopotami, anatomically speaking
so closely allied to the extinct species, are so aquatic and
fluviatile in their habits, as to make it difficult to conceive
that their congeners could have thriven all the year round
in regions where, during winter, the rivers were frozen over
for months. Moreover, I have been unable to learn that, in
any instance, bones of the hippopotamus have been found in
the drift of northern Grermany associated with the remains
of the mammoth, tichorhine rhinoceros, musk-buffalo, rein
deer, lemming, and other arctic quadrupeds before alluded to
(p. 157); yet, though not proved to have ever made a part
of such a fauna, the presence of the fossil hippopotamus north
of the fiftieth parallel of latitude naturally tempts us to
speculate on the migratory powers and instincts of some of
the extinct species of the genus. They may have resembled,
in this respect, the living musk-buffalo, herds of which pass
for hundreds of miles over the ice to the rich pastures of
Melville Island, and then return again to southern latitudes
before the ice breaks up.
I am indebted to Dr. Falconer for having called my
attention to the account given by an experienced zoologist,
Dr. Andrew Smith,* of the migratory habits of the living
hippopotamus of Southern Africa (H. amphibius, Linn.).
* Illustrations of the Zoology of South Africa : art. ' Hippopotamus.'
N 2
180 CLIMATE AND HABITS OF THE HIPPOPOTAMUS. CHAP. x.
He states that, when the Dutch first colonized the Cape of
Good Hope, this animal abounded in all the great rivers, as
far south as the land extends; whereas, in 1849, they had all
disappeared, scarcely one remaining even within a moderate
distance of the colony. He also tells us that this species
evinces great sagacity in changing its quarters whenever
danger threatens, quitting every district invaded by settlers
bearing fire-arms. Bulky as they are, they can travel
speedily for miles over land from one pool of a dried-up
river to another ; but it is by water that their powers of
locomotion are surpassingly great, not only in rivers, but in
the sea, for they are far from confining themselves to fresh
water. Indeed, Dr. Smith finds it ' difficult to decide whether,
during the daytime and when not feeding, they prefer the
pools of rivers or the waters of the ocean for their abode.' In
districts where they have been disturbed by man, they feed
almost entirely in the night, chiefly on certain kinds of grass,
but also on brushwood. Dr. Smith relates that, in an ex
pedition which he made north of Port Natal, he found them
swarming in all the rivers about the tropic of Capricorn,
Here they were often seen to have left their foot-prints on
the sands, entering or coming out of the salt water ; and on
one occasion Smith's party tried in vain to intercept a
female with her young as she was making her way to the sea.
Another female, which they had wounded on her precipitate
retreat to the sea, was afterwards shot in that element.
The geologist, therefore, may freely speculate on the time
when herds of hippopotami issued from North African rivers,
such as the Nile, and swam northwards in summer along the
coasts of the Mediterranean, or even occasionally visited
islands near the shore. Here and there they may have landed
to graze or browse, tarrying awhile and afterwards continuing
their course northwards. Others may have swum in a few
summer days from rivers in the south of Spain or France to
CHAP. x. POST-PLIOCENE BURIAL-PLACE, SOUTH OF FRANCE. 181
the Somme, Thames, or Severn, making timely retreat to the
south before the snow and ice set in.
Burial-place at A urignac, in the South of France, of
Post-pliocene Date.
I have alluded in the beginning of the fourth chapter (p. 58)
to a custom prevalent among rude nations of consigning to the
tomb works of art, once the property of the dead or objects
of their affection, and even of storing up, in many cases,
animal food destined for the manes of the defunct in a future
life. I also cited M. Desnoyers' comments on the absence
among the bones of wild and domestic animals found in old
Gaulish tombs of all intermixture of extinct species of qua
drupeds, as proving that the oldest sepulchral monuments
then known in France (1845) had no claims to high antiquity
founded on palseontological data.
M. Lartet, however, has recently published a circumstantial
account of what seems clearly to have been a sepulchral vault
of the post-pliocene period, near Aurignac, not far from the
foot of the Pyrenees. I have had the advantage of inspect
ing the fossil bones and works of art obtained by him from
that grotto, and of conversing and corresponding with him
on the subject, and can see no grounds for doubting the sound
ness of his conclusions.*
The town of Aurignac is situated in the department of the
Haute Graronne, near a spur of the Pyrenees ; adjoining it is
the small flat-topped hill of Fajoles, about sixty feet above
the brook called Eodes, which flows at its foot on one side.
It consists of nummulitic limestone, presenting a steep escarp
ment towards the north-west, on which side in the face of the
* See Lartet, Annales des Mines, in Natural History Eeview, London,
Zoologie, torn. xv. p. 177, translated January 1862.
182 SECTION OF SEPULCHRAL GROTTO AT AURIGNAC. CHAP. x.
rock, about forty-five feet above the brook, is now visible the
entrance of a grotto, a, fig. 25, which opened originally on the
terrace h, c, k, which slopes gently towards the valley.
Fig. 25
Section of part of the hill of Fajoles passing through the sepulchral grotto of
Aurignac (E. Lartet).
a Part of the vault in which the remains of seventeen human skeletons
were found.
b Layer of made ground, two feet thick, inside the grotto in which a few
human bones, with entire bones of extinct and living species of ani
mals, and many works of art were embedded.
c Layers of ashes and charcoal, eight inches thick, with broken, burnt, and
gnawed bones of extinct and recent mammalia; also hearth-stones
and works of art ; no human bones.
d Deposit with similar contents and a few scattered cinders.
e Talus of rubbish washed down from the hill above.
/, g Slab of rock which closed the vault, not ascertained whether it ex
tended to h. .
/, i Eabbit burrow which led to the discovery of the grotto.
h, Jc Original terrace on which the grotto opened.
N Nummulitic limestone of hill of Fajoles.
Until the year 1852, the opening into this grotto was
masked by a talus of small fragments of limestone and earthy
CHAP. x. DISCOVERY OF HUMAN BONES. 183
matter, e, such as the rain may have washed down the slope
of the hill. In that year a labourer named Bonnemaison,
employed in repairing the roads, observed that rabbits, when
hotly pursued by the sportsman, ran into a hole which they
had burrowed in the talus, at i /, fig. 25. On reaching as far
into the opening as the length of his arm, he drew out, to
his surprise, one of the long bones of the human skeleton ; and
his curiosity being excited, and having a suspicion that the
hole communicated with a subterranean cavity, he commenced
digging a trench through the middle of the talus, and in a
few hours found himself opposite a large heavy slab of rock
/ h, placed vertically against the entrance. Having removed
this, he discovered on the other side of it an arched cavity, a,
seven or eight feet in its greatest height, ten in width, and
seven in horizontal depth. It was almost filled with bones,
among which were two entire skulls, which he recognised at once
as human. The people of Aurignac, astonished to hear of the
occurrence of so many human relics in so lonely a spot, flocked
to the cave, and Dr. Amiel, the Mayor, ordered all the bones
to be taken out and reinterred in the parish cemetery. But
before this was done, having as a medical man a knowledge
of anatomy, he ascertained by counting the homologous
bones that they must have formed parts of no less than seven
teen skeletons of both sexes, and all ages; some so young that
the ossification of some of the bones was incomplete. He also
remarked that the size of the adults was such as to imply
a race of small stature. Unfortunately the skulls were
injured in the transfer ; and what is worse, after the lapse of
eight years, when M. Lartet visited Aurignac, the village
sexton was unable to tell him in what exact place the trench
was dug, into which the skeletons had been thrown, so that
this rich harvest of ethnological knowledge seems for ever lost
to the antiquary and geologist.
M. Lartet having been shown, in 1860, the remains of some
184 WORKS OF ART FOUND OUTSIDE THE GROTTO. CHAP. x.
extinct animals and works of art, found in digging the
original trench made by Bonnemaison through the bed d
under the talus, and some others brought out from the interior
of the grotto, determined to investigate systematically what
remained intact of the deposits outside and inside the vault,
those inside, underlying the human skeletons, being supposed
to consist entirely of made ground. Having obtained the
assistance, of some intelligent workmen, he personally super
intended their labours, and found outside the grotto, resting
on the sloping terrace h k, the layer of ashes and charcoal
c, about seven inches thick, extending over an area of six
or seven square yards, and going as far as the entrance
of the grotto and no farther, there being no cinders or
charcoal in the interior. Among the cinders outside the
vault were fragments of fissile sandstone, reddened by heat,
which were observed to rest on a levelled surface of nummu-
litic limestone and to have formed a hearth. The nearest
place from whence such slabs of sandstone could have been
brought was the opposite side of the valley.
Among the ashes, and in some overlying earthy layers, d,
separating the ashes from the talus e, were a great variety
of bones and implements ; amongst the latter not fewer
than a hundred flint articles knives, projectiles, sling
stones, and chips, and among them one of those siliceous
cores or nuclei with numerous facets, from which flint flakes
or knives had been struck off, seeming to prove that
some instruments were occasionally manufactured on the
very spot.
Among other articles outside the entrance was found a
stone of a circular form, and flattened on two sides, with a
central depression, composed of a tough rock which does not
belong to that region of the Pyrenees. This instrument is
supposed by the Danish antiquaries to have been used for re
moving by skilful blows the edges of flint knives, the
CHAP. x. BONES OF MAMMALIA FOUND AT AURIGNAC. 185
fingers and thumb being placed in the two opposite depressions
during the operation. Among the bone instruments were
arrows without barbs, and other tools made of rein-deer
horn, and a bodkin formed out of the more compact horn
of the roe-deer. This instrument was well shaped, and
sharply pointed, and in so good a state of preservation
that it might still be used for piercing the tough skins of
animals.
Scattered through the same ashes and earth were the
bones of the various species of animals enumerated in the
subjoined lists, with the exception of two, marked with
an asterisk, which only occurred in the interior of the
grotto :
1. CARNIVORA.
Number of individuals.
1. Ursus spel&us (cave-bear) 5 - - 6
2. Ursus Arctos ? (brown bear) . . 1
3. Meles Taxus (badger) 1 2
4. Putorius vulgaris (polecat) . . 1
5.*Felis spel&a (cave-lion) 1
6. Felis Catus ferus (wild cat) .... 1
7. Hyana spelcea (cave-hyaena) . . . .5 6
8. Canis Lupus (wolf) 3
9. Canis Vulpes (fox) U8 20
2. HERBIVORA.
1. Elephas primigenius (mammoth, two molars).
2. Ehinoceros tichorhinus (Siberian rhinoceros) . 1
3. Equus Cabcdlus (horse) 12 15
4. Equus Asinus ? (ass) 1
5.*Sus Scrofa (pig, two incisors).
6. Cervus Elephas (stag) 1
7. Megaceros hybernicus (gigantic Irish deer) . . 1
8. G. Capreolus (roebuck) 3 4
9. C. Tarandus (reindeer) 10 12
10. Bison europ&us (aurochs) 12 15
The bones of the herbivora were the most numerous, and
all those on the outside of the grotto which had contained
marrow were invariably split open, as if for its extraction, many
186 THE RHINOCEROS TICHORINUS EATEN BY MAN. CHAP. x.
of them being also burnt. The spongy parts/ moreover,
were wanting, having been eaten off and gnawed after they
were broken, the work, according to M. Lartet, of hyaenas,
the bones and coprolites of which were plentifully mixed with
the cinders, and dispersed through the overlying soil d. These
beasts of prey are supposed to have prowled about the spot
and fed on such relics of the funeral feasts as remained after
the retreat of the human visitors, or during the intervals
between successive funeral ceremonies which accompanied
the interment of the corpses within the sepulchre. Many of
the bones were also streaked, as if the flesh had been scraped
off by a flint instrument.
Among the various proofs that the bones were fresh when
brought to the spot, it is remarked that those of the herbivora
not only bore the marks of having had the marrow extracted
and having afterwards been gnawed and in part devoured as if
by carnivorous beasts, but that they had also been acted upon
by fire (and this was especially noticed in one case of a
cave-bear's bone), in such a manner as to show that they
retained in them at the time all their animal matter.
Among other quadrupeds which appear to have been eaten
at the funeral feasts, and of which the bones occurred among
the ashes, were those of a young Rhinoceros tichorhinus, the
bones of which had been split open for the extraction of the
marrow, and gnawed by a beast of prey at both extremities.
Outside of the great slab of stone forming the door,
not one human bone occurred ; inside of it there were found,
mixed with loose soil, the remains of as many as seventeen
human individuals, besides some works of art and bones of
animals. We know nothing of the arrangement of these
bones when they were first broken into. M. Lartet infers,
from the small height and dimensions of the vault, that the
bodies were bent down upon themselves in a squatting atti
tude, a posture known to have been adopted in most of the
sepulchres of primitive times ; and he has so represented them
CHAP. x. WORKS OF ART FOUND IN THE GROTTO. 187
in his restoration of the cave. His artist also has inad
vertently, in the same drawing, delineated the arched grotto
as if it were shaped very regularly and smoothly, like a finished
piece of masonry, whereas the surface was in truth as uneven
and irregular as are the roofs of all natural grottos.
There was no stalagmite in the grotto, and M. Lartet, an
experienced investigator of ossiferous caverns in the south of
France, came to the conclusion that all the bones and soil
found in the inside were artificially introduced. The sub
stratum, 6, fig. 25, which remained after the skeletons had
been removed, was about two feet thick. In it were found
about ten detached human bones, including a molar tooth ;
and M. Delesse ascertained by careful analysis of one of these,
as well as of the bones of a rhinoceros, bear, and some other
extinct animals, that they all contained precisely the same
proportion of azote, or had lost an equal quantity of their
animal matter. My friend Mr. Evans, before cited, has sug
gested to me that such a fact, taken alone, may not be con
clusive in favour of the equal antiquity of the human and
other remains, although it has no doubt an important bearing
on the case, because, had the human skeletons been found to
contain less gelatine than those of the extinct mammalia, it
would have shown that they were the more modern of the
two. But it is possible that after a bone has gone on
losing its animal matter up to a certain point, it may then
part with no more so long as it continues enveloped in the
same matrix, so that if all the bones have lain for many thou
sands of years in a particular soil, they may all have reached
long ago the maximum of decomposition attainable in such a
matrix. In the present case, however, the proof of the con
temporaneousness of man and the extinct animals does not
depend simply on the identity of their mineral condition.
The chemical analysis of M. Delesse is only a fact in corro-
boration of a great mass of other evidence.
Mixed with the human bones inside the grotto first re-
188 WORKS OF ART FOUND IN THE GROTTO. CHAP. x.
moved by Bonnemaison, were eighteen small, round, and flat
plates of a white shelly substance, made of some species of
cockle (Cardium), pierced through the middle as if for being
strung into a bracelet. In the substratum also in the interior
examined by M. Lartet was found the tusk of a young Ursus
spelceus, the crown of which had been stripped of its enamel,
and which had been carved perhaps in imitation of the head
of a bird. It was perforated lengthwise as if for suspension
as an ornament or amulet. A flint knife also was found in
the interior which had evidently never been used; in this
respect, unlike the numerous worn specimens found outside,
so that it is conjectured that it may, like other associated
works of art, have been placed there as part of the funeral
ceremonies.
A few teeth of the cave-lion, Felis spelcea, and two tusks of
the wild boar, also found in the interior, were memorials
perhaps of the chase. No remains of the same animals were
met with among the external relics.
On the whole, the bones of animals inside the vault offer a
remarkable contrast to those of the exterior, being all entire
and uninjured, none of them broken, gnawed, half-eaten,
scraped or burnt like those lying among the ashes on the
other side of the great slab which formed the portal. The
bones of the interior seem to have been clothed with their
flesh, when buried in the layer of loose soil strewed over the
floor. In confirmation of this idea, many bones of the
skeleton were often observed to be in juxta-position, and in
one spot nearly all the bones of an Ursus spelceus were lying
together uninjured. Add to this, the entire absence in the
interior of cinders and charcoal, and we can scarcely doubt that
we have here an example of an ancient place of sepulture,
closed at the opening so effectually against the hysenas or
other carnivora that no marks of their teeth appear on any of
the bones, whether human or brute.
CHAP. x. FUNERAL EITES OF INDIANS. 189
John Carver, in his travels in the interior of North" America
in 1766-68 (ch. xv.), gave a minute account of the funeral
rites of an Indian tribe, which inhabited the country now
called Iowa, at the junction of the St. Peter's Eiver with the
Mississippi ; and Schiller, iD his famous ' Nadowessische
Todtenklage,' has faithfully embodied in a poetic dirge all
the characteristic features of the ceremonies so graphically
described by the English traveller, not omitting the many
funeral gifts which, we are told, were placed c in a cave'
with the bodies of the dead. The lines beginning, ' Bringet
her die letzten Graben,' have been thus translated, truth
fully, and with all the spirit of the original, by Sir E. L.
Bulwer *
' Here bring the last gifts ! and with these
The last lament be said ;
Let all that pleased, and yet may please,
Be buried with the dead.
' Beneath his head the hatchet hide,
That he so stoutly swung ;
And place the bear's fat haunch beside
The journey hence is long !
' And let the knife new sharpened be
That on the battle-day
Shore with quick strokes he took but three
The foeman's scalp away !
' The paints that warriors love to use,
Place here within his hand,
That he may shine with ruddy hues
Amidst the spirit-land.'
If we accept M. Lartet's interpretation of the ossiferous de
posits of Aurignac, both inside and outside the grotto, they
add nothing to the palseontological evidence in favour of
man's antiquity, for we have seen all the same mammalia
associated elsewhere with flint implements, and some species,
such as the Elephas antiquus, Rhinoceros hemitcechus, and
Hippopotamus major, missing here, have been met with in
* Poems and Ballads of Schiller.
190 RELATIVE ANTIQUITY OF AURIGNAC FOSSILS. CHAP. x.
other places. An argument, however, having an opposite
leaning may perhaps be founded on the phenomena of
Aurignac. It may, indeed it has been said, that they imply
that some of the extinct mammalia survived nearly to our
times.
Fi rs t ? Because of the modern style of the works of art
at Aurignac.
Secondlv, Because of the absence of any signs of change
in the physical geography of the country since the cave was
used for a place of sepulture.
In reference to the first of these propositions, the utensils,
it is said, of bone and stone indicate a more advanced state of
the arts than the flint implements of Abbeville and Amiens.
M. Lartet, however, is of opinion that they do not, and thinks
that we have no right to assume that the fabricators of the
various spear-headed and other tools of the Valley of the
Somme possessed no bone instruments or ornaments resem
bling those discovered at Aurignac. These last, moreover,
he regards as extremely rude in comparison with others of the
stone period in France, which can be proved palseontologically,
at least by strong negative evidence, to be of subsequent date.
Thus, for example, at Savigne, near Civray, in the department
of Vienne, there is a cave in which there are no extinct mam
malia, but where remains of the rein-deer abound. The
works of art of the stone period found there indicate con
siderable progress in skill beyond that attested by the objects
found in the Aurignac grotto. Among the Savigne articles,
there is a stag's horn, on which figures of two animals, ap
parently meant for deer, are engraved in outline, as if by a
sharp-pointed flint. In another cave, that of Massat, in the
department of Arriege, which M. Lartet ascribes to the period
of the aurochs, a quadruped which survived the rein-deer in
the south of France, there are bone instruments of a still more
advanced state of the arts, as, for example, barbed arrows
CHAP. X. RELATIVE ANTIQUITY OF AURIGNAC FOSSILS. 191
with a small canal in each, believed to have served for the
insertion of poison ; also a needle of bird's bone, finely shaped,
with an eye or perforation at one end, and a stag's horn, on
which is carved a representation of a bear's head, and a hole
at one end as if for suspending it. In this figure we see, says
M. Lartet, what may perhaps be the earliest known example
of lines used to express shading.
The fauna of the aurochs (Bison europceus) agrees with
that of the earlier lake dwellings in Switzerland, in which
hitherto the rein-deer is wanting ; whereas the rein-deer has
been found in a Swiss cave, in Mont Saleve, supposed by
Lartet to be more ancient than the lake dwellings.
According to this view, the mammalian fauna has undergone
at least two fluctuations since the remains of some extinct
quadrupeds were eaten, and others buried as funeral gifts
in the sepulchral vault of Aurignac.
As to the absence of any marked changes in the physical
configuration of the district since the same grotto was a place
of sepulture, we must remember that it is the normal state
of the earth's surface to be undergoing great alterations in
one place, while other areas, often in close proximity, remain
for ages without any modification. In one region, rivers
are deepening and widening their channels, or the waves
of the sea are undermining cliffs, or the land is sinking
beneath or rising above the waters, century after century, or
the volcano is pouring forth torrents of lava or showers of
ashes ; while, in tracts -hard by, the ancient forest, or extensive
heath, or the splendid city continue scatheless and motionless.
Had the talus which concealed from view the ancient hearth
with its cinders and the massive stone portal of the Aurignac
grotto escaped all human interference for thousands of years
to come, there is no reason to suppose that the small stream
at the foot of the hill of Fajoles would have undermined it.
At the end of a long period the only alteration might have
192 EELATIVE ANTIQUITY OF AURIGNAC FOSSILS. CHAP. x.
been the thickening of the talus which protected the loose
cinders and bones from waste. We behold in many a valley
of Auvergne, within fifty feet of the present river channel, a
volcanic cone of loose ashes, with a crater at its summit, from
which powerful currents of basaltic lava have poured, usurping
the ancient bed of the torrent. By the action of the stream,
in the course of ages, vast masses of the hard columnar basalt
have been removed, pillar after pillar, and much vesicular
lava, as in the case, for example, of the Puy Eouge, near
Chalucet, and of the Puy de Tartar et, near Nechers.* The
rivers have even in some cases, as the Sioule, near Chalucet,
cut through not only the basalt which dispossessed them of
their ancient channels, but have actually eaten fifty feet into
the subjacent gneiss ; yet the cone, an incoherent heap of
scoria3 and spongy ejectamenta, stands unmolested. Had the
waters once risen, even for a day, so high as to reach the
level of the base of one of these cones had there been a single
flood fifty or sixty feet in height since the last eruption oc
curred, a great part of these volcanoes must inevitably have
been swept away as readily as all traces of the layer of cinders ;
and the accompanying bones would have been obliterated by
the Rodes near Aurignac, had it risen, since the days of the
mammoth, rhinoceros, and cave-bear, fifty feet above its
present level.
The Aurignac cave adds no new species to the list of
extinct quadrupeds, which we have elsewhere, and by inde
pendent evidence, ascertained to have once flourished con
temporaneously with man. But if the fossil memorials have
been correctly interpreted if we have here before us at the
northern base of the Pyrenees a sepulchral vault with
skeletons of human beings, consigned by friends and
relatives to their last resting-place if we have also at the
* Scrope's Volcanoes of Central France, p. 97, 1858.
CHAP. x. BURIAL RITES OF POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD. 193
portal of the tomb the relics of funeral feasts, and within it
indications of viands destined for the use of the departed on
their way to a land of spirits ; while among the funeral gifts
are weapons wherewith in other fields to chase the gigantic
deer, the cave-lion, the cave-bear, and woolly rhinoceros, we
have at last succeeded in tracing back the sacred rites of
burial, and, more interesting still, a belief in a future state,
to times long anterior to those of history and tradition.
Rude and superstitious as may have been the savage of that
remote era, he still deserved, by cherishing hopes of a here
after, the epithet of ' noble,' which Dryden gave to what he
seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition
of our race :
' as Nature first made man
When wild in woods the noble savage ran.' *
Siege of Granada, Part I., act i. scene 1.
194 HUMAN FOSSILS OF LE PUT AND NATCHEZ. CHAP xi.
CHAPTER XL
AGE OF HUMAN FOSSILS OF LE PUT IN CENTRAL FRANCE AND
OF NATCHEZ ON THE MISSISSIPPI, DISCUSSED.
QUESTION AS TO THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE FOSSIL MAN OF DENISE,
NEAR LE PUY-EN-VELAY, CONSIDERED ANTIQUITY OF THE HUMAN
RACE IMPLIED BY THAT FOSSIL SUCCESSIVE PERIODS OF VOLCANIC
ACTION IN CENTRAL FRANCE WITH WHAT CHANGES IN THE MAM
MALIAN FAUNA THEY CORRESPOND THE ELEPHAS MERIDIONALIS
ANTERIOR IN TIME TO THE IMPLEMENT-BEARING GRAVEL OF ST. ACHEUL
AUTHENTICITY OF THE HUMAN FOSSIL OF' NATCHEZ ON THE MISSIS
SIPPI, DISCUSSED THE NATCHEZ DEPOSIT, CONTAINING BONES OF MAS
TODON AND MEGALONYX, PROBABLY NOT OLDER THAN THE FLINT
IMPLEMENTS OF ST. ACHEUL.
AMONG- the fossil remains of the human species supposed
to have claims to high antiquity, and which have for
many years attracted attention, two of the most prominent
examples are
First, f The fossil man of Denise,' comprising the re
mains of more than one skeleton, found in a volcanic breccia
near the town of Le Puy-en-Velay, in Central France.
Secondly, The fossil human bone of Natchez, on the Mis
sissippi, supposed to have been derived from a deposit con
taining remains of mastodon and megalonyx. Having
carefully examined the sites of both of these celebrated fossils,
I shall consider in this chapter the nature of the evidence on
which the remote date of their entombment is inferred.
Fossil Man of Denise,
An account of the fossil remains, so called, was first published
in 1844, by M. Aymard of Le Puy, a writer of deservedly
CHAP. xi. FOSSIL MAN OF DENISE. 195
high authority both as a palaeontologist and archaeologist.*
M. Pictet, after visiting Le Puy and investigating the site
of the alleged discovery, was satisfied that the fossil bones
belonged to the period of the last volcanic eruptions of Velay ;
but expressly stated in his important treatise on palaeontology
that this conclusion, though it might imply that man had
coexisted with the extinct elephant, did not draw with it the
admission that the human race was anterior in date to the
filling of the caverns of France and Belgium with the bones
of extinct mammalia.f
At a meeting of the ' Scientific Congress ' of France, held
at Le Puy in 1856, the question of the age of the Denise
fossil bones was fully gone into, and in the report of their
proceedings published in that year, the opinions of some of
the most skilful osteologists respecting the point in con
troversy are recorded. The late Abbe Croizet, a most
experienced collector of fossil bones in the volcanic regions
of Central France, and an able naturalist, and the late M.
Laurillard, of Paris, who assisted Cuvier in modelling many
fossil bones, and in the arrangement of the museum of the
Jardin, declared their opinion that the specimen preserved in
the museum of Le Puy is no counterfeit. They believed the
human bones to have been enveloped by natural causes in
the tufaceous matrix in which we now see them.
In the year 1859, Professor Hebert and M. Lartet visited
Le Puy, expressly to investigate the same specimen, and to
inquire into the authenticity of the bones and their geological
age. Later in the same year, I went myself to Le Puy,
having the same object in view, and had the good fortune to
meet there my friend Mr. Poulett Scrope, with whom I ex
amined the Montagne de Denise, where "a peasant related to
us how he had dug out the specimen with his own hands and
* Bulletin de la Societe Geologique f Trait6 de Paleontologie, torn. i.
de France, 1844, 1845, 1847. p. 152, 1853.
o 2
196 AGE OF FOSSIL MAN OF DEMISE, CHAP. xi.
in his own vineyard, not far from the summit of the volcano. I
employed a labourer to make under his directions some fresh
excavations, following up those which had been made a month
earlier by MM. Hebert and Lartet, in the hope of verifying
the true position of the fossils, but all of us without success.
We failed even to find in situ any exact counterpart of the
stone of the Le Puy Museum.
The osseous remains of that specimen consist of a frontal
and some other parts of the skull, including the upper jaw
with teeth, both of an adult and young individual ; also a
radius, some lumbar vertebrae, and some metatarsal bones.
They are all embedded in a light porous tuff, resembling in
colour and mineral composition the ejectamenta of several of
the latest eruptions of Denise. But none of the bones pene
trate into another part of the same specimen, which consists
of a more compact rock thickly laminated. Nevertheless, I
agree with the Abbe Croizet and M. Aymard, that it is not
conceivable even that the less coherent part of the museum
specimen which envelopes the human bones should have been
artificially put together, whatever may have been the origin
of certain other slabs of tuff which were afterwards sold as
coming from the same place, and which also contained human
remains. Whether some of these were spurious or not is a
question more difficult to decide. One of them, now in the
possession of M. Pichot-Dumazel, an advocate of Le Puy, is
suspected of having had some plaster of Paris introduced into
it to bind the bones more firmly together in the loose vol
canic tuff. I was assured that a dealer in objects of natural
history at Le Puy had been in the habit of occasionally se
curing the cohesion in that manner of fragments of broken
bones, and the juxta-position of uninjured ones found free
and detachable in loose volcanic tuffs. From this to. the
fabrication of a factitious human fossil was, it is suggested,
but a short step. But in reference to M. Pichot's specimen,
CHAP. xi. NEAK LE PUY-EN-VELAY. 197
an expert anatomist remarked to me that it would far exceed
the skill, whether of the peasant who owned the vineyard or
of the dealer above mentioned, to put together in their true
position all the thirty-eight bones of the hand and fingers, or
the sixteen of the wrist, without making any mistake, and
especially without mixing those of the right with the ho
mologous bones of the left hand, assuming that they had
brought bones, from some other spot, and then artificially
introduced them into a mixture of volcanic tuff and plaster
of Paris.
Granting, however, that the high prices given for ( human
fossils ' at Le Puy may have led to the perpetration of some
frauds, it is still an interesting question to consider whether
the admission of the genuineness of a single fossil, such as
that now in the museum at Le Puy, would lead us to assign
a higher antiquity to the existence of man in France than is
deducible from many other facts explained in the last seven
chapters. In reference to this point, I may observe, that
although I was not able to fix with precision the exact bed in
the volcanic mountain from which the rock containing the
human bones was taken, M. Felix Eobert has, nevertheless,
after studying ( the volcanic alluviums ' of Denise, ascer
tained that, on the side of Cheyrac and the village of
Malouteyre, blocks of tufif frequently occur exactly like the
one in the museum. That tuff he considers a product of
the latest eruption of the volcano. In it have been found
the remains of Hycena spelcea and Hippopotamus major.
The eruptions of steam and gaseous matter which burst
forth from the crater of Denise broke through laminated
o
tertiary clays, small pieces of which, some of them scarcely
altered, others half converted into scoriaB, were cast out
in abundance, while other portions must have been in a
state of argillaceous mud. Showers of such materials would
be styled by the Neapolitans '. aqueous lava ' or ' lava d' aqua,'
198 VOLCANIC ACTION IN CENTRAL FRANCE. CHAP. XT.
and we may well suppose that some human individuals,
if any existed, would, together with wild animals, be occa
sionally overwhelmed in these tuffs. From near the place
on the mountain whence the block with human bones now
in the museum is said to have come, a stream of lava, well
marked by its tabular structure, flowed down the flanks of
the hill, within a few feet of the alluvial plain of the Borne,
a small tributary of the Loire, on the opposite bank of which
stands the town of Le Puy. Its continuous extension to so
low a level clearly shows that the valley had already been
deepened to within a few feet of its present depth at the time
of the flowing of the lava.
We know that the alluvium of the same district, having a
similar relation to the present geographical outline of the
valleys, is of post-pliocene date, for it contains around Le Puy
the bones of Elephas primigenius and Rhinoceros ticho-
rhinus ; and this affords us a palseontological test of the age of
the human skeleton of Denise, if the latter be assumed to be
coeval with the lava stream above referred to.
It is important to dwell on this point, because some geolo
gists have felt disinclined to believe in the genuineness of
the ' fossil man of Denise,' on the ground that, if conceded,
it would imply that the human race was contemporary with
an older fauna, or that of the Elephas meridionalis. Such a
fauna is found fossil in another layer of tuff covering the slope
of Denise, opposite to that where the museum specimen was
exhumed. The quadrupeds obtained from that more ancient
tuff comprise Elephas meridionalis, Hippopotamus major,
Rhinoceros megarhinus, Antilope torticornis, Hycena brevi-
rostris, and twelve others of the genera horse, ox, stag, goat,
tiger, &c., all supposed to be of extinct species. This tuff,
found between Malouteyre and Polignac, M. Robert regards
as the product of a much older eruption, and referable to the
neighbouring Montague de St. Anne, a volcano in a much
CHAP. xi. CORRESPONDING MAMMALIAN FAUNA. 199
more wasted and denuded state than Denise, and classed by
M. Bertrand de Doue as of intermediate age between the
ancient and modern cones of Velay.
The fauna to which Elephas meridionalis and its associates
belong, can be shown to be of anterior date, in the north of
France, to the flint implements of St. Acheul, by the follow
ing train of reasoning. The Valley of the Seine is not only
geographically contiguous to the Valley of the Somme, but its
ancient alluvium contains the same mammoth and other
fossil species. The Eure, one of the tributaries of the Seine,
in its way to join that river, flows in a valley which follows
a line of fault in the chalk ; and this valley is seen to be
comparatively modern, because it intersects at St. Prest, four
miles below Chartres, an older valley belonging to an anterior
system of drainage, and which has been filled by a more
ancient fluviatile alluvium, consisting of sand and gravel,
ninety feet thick. I have examined the site of this older drift,
and the fossils have been determined by Dr. Falconer. They
comprise Elephas meridionalis, a species of rhinoceros (not
R. tichorhinus), and other mammalia differing from those
of the implement-bearing gravels of the Seine and Somme.
The latter, belonging to the period of the mammoth,
might very well have been contemporary with the modern vol
canic eruptions of Central France ; and we may presume, even
without the aid of the Denise fossil, that man may have wit
nessed these. But the tuffs and gravels in which the Elephas
meridionalis are embedded were synchronous with an older
epoch of volcanic action, to which the cone of St. Anne, near
Le Puy, and many other mountains of M. Bertrand de Doue's
middle period belong, having cones and craters, which have
undergone much waste by aqueous erosion. We have as
yet no proof that man witnessed the origin of these hills of
lava and scoriae of the middle phase of volcanic action.
Some surprise was expressed in 1856, by several of the
200 HUMAN FOSSIL OF NATCHEZ. CHAP. XT.
assembled naturalists at Le Puy, that the skull of the c fossil
man of Denise,' although contemporary with the mammoth,
and coeval with the last eruptions of the Le Puy volcanoes,
should be of the ordinary Caucasian or European type ; but
the observations of Professor Huxley on the Engis skull,
cited in the fifth chapter, showing the near approach of that
ancient cranium to the European standard, will help to
remove this source of perplexity.
Human Fossil of Natchez on the Mississippi.
I have already alluded to Dr. Bowler's attempt to calculate,
in years, the antiquity of the human skeleton said to have
been buried under four cypress forests in the delta of the
Mississippi, near New Orleans (see page 43). In that case
no remains of extinct animals were found associated with
those of man : but in another part of the basin of the
Mississippi, a human bone, accompanied by bones of the
mastodon and megalonyx, is supposed to have been washed
out of a more ancient alluvial deposit.
After visiting the spot in 1846, I described the geological
position of the bones, and discussed their probable age, with
Fig. 26
1 Modern alluvium of the Mississippi. 2 Loam or loess.
3, / Eocene. 4 Cretaceous.
a stronger bias, I must confess, as to the antecedent improba
bility of the contemporaneous entombment of man and
the mastodon than any geologist would now be justified in
entertaining.
In the latitude of Vicksburg 32 50' N., the broad, flat,
alluvial plain of the Mississippi, a b, fig. 26, is bounded on
CHAP. XI. SHELLS OF THE NATCHEZ DEPOSIT. 201
its eastern side by a table-land, d e, about two hundred feet
higher than the river, and extending twelve miles eastward
with a gentle upward slope. This elevated platform ends
abruptly at d, in a line of perpendicular cliffs or bluffs, the
base of which is continually undermined by the great river.
The table-land, d e, consists at Vicksburg, through which
the annexed section, fig. 26, passes, of loam, overlying the
tertiary strata, //. Between the loam and the tertiary for
mation there is usually a deposit of stratified sand and
gravel, containing large fragments of silicified corals and
the wreck of older palaeozoic rocks. The age of this inter
vening drift, which is one hundred and forty feet thick at
Natchez, has not yet been determined ; but it may possibly
belong to the glacial period. Natchez is about eighty miles in
a straight line south of Vicksburg, on the same left bank of
the Mississippi. Here there is a bluff, the upper sixty feet
of which consists of a continuous portion of the same calcareous
loam as at Vicksburg, equally resembling the Ehenish loess
in mineral character and in being sometimes barren of fossils,
sometimes so full of them that bleached land-shells stand
out conspicuously in relief in the vertical and weathered
face of cliffs which form the banks of streams, everywhere
intersecting the loam.
So numerous are the shells that I was able to collect at
Natchez, in a few hours, in 1846, no less than twenty species
of the genera Helix, Helicina, Pupa, Cydostoma, Achatina,
and Succinea, all identical with shells now living in the same
country ; and in one place I observed (as happens also occa
sionally in the valley of the Ehine) a passage of the loam
with land-shells into an underlying marly deposit of sub
aqueous origin, in which shells of the genera Limnea,
Planorbis, Paludina, Physa, and Cyclas, were embedded,
also consisting of recent American species. Such deposits,
more distinctly stratified than the loam . containing land-
202 HUMAN FOSSIL OF NATCHEZ. CHAP. xi.
shells, are produced, as before stated, p. 129, in all great
alluvial plains, where the river shifts its position, and where
marshes, ponds, and lakes are formed in its old deserted
channels. In this part of America, however, it may have
happened that some of these lakes were caused by partial
subsidences, such as were witnessed, during the earthquakes
of 1811-12, around New Madrid, in the valley of the
Mississippi.
Owing to the destructible nature of the yellow loam, d e,
fig. 26, every streamlet flowing over the platform has
cut for itself, in its way to the Mississippi, a deep gully or
ravine ; and this erosion has of late years, especially since 1812,
proceeded with accelerated speed, ascribable in some degree
to the partial clearing of the native forest, but partly also to
the effects of the earthquake of 1811-12. By that con
vulsion the region around Natchez was rudely shaken and
much fissured. One of the narrow valleys near Natchez, due
to this fissuring, is now called the Mammoth Ravine. Though
no less than seven miles long, and in some parts sixty feet
deep, I was assured by a resident proprietor, Colonel Wiley,
that it had no existence before 1812. With its numerous
ramifications, it is said to have been entirely formed since
the earthquake at New Madrid. Before that event, Colonel
Wiley had ploughed some of the land exactly over a spot
now traversed by part of this water-course.
I satisfied myself that the ravine had been considerably en
larged and lengthened a short time before my visit, and it
was then freshly undermined and undergoing constant waste.
From a clayey deposit immediately below the yellow loam,
bones of the Mastodon ohioticus, a species of megalonyx,
bones of the genera Equus, Bos, and others, some of extinct
and others presumed to be of living species, had been
detached, and had fallen to the base of the cliffs. Mingled
with the rest, the pelvic bone of a man., os innominatum,
CHAP. xr. AGE OF THE NATCHEZ DEPOSIT. 203
was obtained by Dr. Dickeson of Natchez, in whose collection
I saw it. It appeared to be quite in the same state of pre
servation, and was of the same black colour as the other
fossils, and was believed to have come like them from a depth
of about thirty feet from the surface. In my ( Second Visit
to America,' in 1846,* I suggested, as a possible explanation
of this association of a human bone with remains of a mastodon
and megalonyx, that the former may possibly have been
derived from the vegetable soil at the top of the cliff, whereas
the remains of extinct mammalia were dislodged from a lower
position, and both may have fallen into the same heap or talus
at the bottom of the ravine. The pelvic bone might, I con
ceived, have acquired its black colour by having lain for
years or centuries in a dark superficial peaty soil, common
in that region. I was informed that there were many human
bones, in old Indian graves in the same district, stained of as
black a die. On suggesting this hypothesis to Colonel Wiley,
of Natchez, I found that the same idea had already occurred
to his mind. No doubt, had the pelvic bone belonged to any
recent mammifer other than man, such a theory would never
have been resorted to; but so long as we have only one
isolated case, and are without the testimony of a geologist who
was present to behold the bone when still engaged in the matrix,
and to extract it with his own hands, it is allowable to suspend
our judgment as to the high antiquity of the fossil.
If, however, I am asked whether I consider the Natchez
loam, with land-shells and the bones of mastodon and
megalonyx, to be more ancient than the alluvium of the
Somme containing flint implements and the remains of the
mammoth and hyaena, I must declare that I do not. Both
in Europe and America the land and freshwater shells accom
panying the extinct pachyderms are of living species, and I
could detect no shell in the Natchez loam so foreign to the
* Vol. ii. p. 197.
204 GREAT ANTIQUITY OF NATCHEZ LOAM. CHAP. xi.
basin of the Mississippi as is the Cyrena fluminalis to the
rivers of modern Europe. If, therefore, the relative ages of
the Picardy and Natchez alluvium were to be decided on
conchological data alone, the fluvio-marine beds of Abbeville
might rank as a shade older than the loess of Natchez. My
reluctance in 1846 to regard the fossil human bone as of post-
pliocene date arose in part from the reflection that the ancient
loess of Natchez is anterior in time to the whole modern
delta of the Mississippi. The table-land, d e, fig. 26, p. 200,
was, I believe, once a part of the original alluvial plain or
delta of the great river before it was upraised. It has now
risen more than two hundred feet above its pristine level.
After the upheaval, or during it, the Mississippi cut through
the old fluviatile formation of which its bluffs are now
formed, just as the Ehine has in many parts of its valley ex
cavated a passage through its ancient loess. If I was right
in calculating that the present delta of the Mississippi has
required, as a minimum of time, more than one hundred
thousand years for its growth,* it would follow, if the claims
of the Natchez man to have coexisted with the mastodon are
admitted, that North America was peopled more than a thou
sand centuries ago by the human race. But even were that
true, we could not presume, reasoning from ascertained
geological data, that the Natchez bone was anterior in data
to the antique flint hatchets of St. Acheul. When we ascend
the Mississippi from Natchez to Vicksburg, and then enter
the Ohio, we are accompanied everywhere by a continuous
fringe of terraces of sand and gravel at a certain height above
the alluvial plain, first of the great river, and then of its
tributary. We also find that the older alluvium contains the
remains of mastodon everywhere, and in some places, as at
Evansville, those of the megalonyx. As in the valley of the
Somme in Europe, those old post-pliocene gravels often occur
* See Principles of Geology.
CHAT>. xi. AGE OF NATCHEZ FOSSIL MAN. 205
at more than one level, and the ancient mounds of the Ohio,
with their works of art, described at p. 39, are newer than
the old terraces of the mastodon period, just as the (rallo-
Koman tombs of St. Acheul or the Celtic weapons of the
Abbeville peat are more modern than the tools of the mam
moth-bearing alluvium.
In the first place, I may remind the reader that the vertical
movement of two hundred and fifty feet, required to elevate
the loess of Natchez to its present height, is exceeded by the
upheaval which the marine stratum of Cagliari, containing
pottery, has been ascertained by Count de la Marmora to have
experienced, p. 177. Such changes of level, therefore, have
actually occurred in Europe in the human epoch, and may
therefore have happened in America. In the second place, I
may observe that, if, since the Natchez mastodon was embedded
in clay, the delta of the Mississippi has been formed, so, since
the mammoth and rhinoceros of Abbeville and Amiens were
enveloped in fluviatile mud and gravel, together with flint
tools, a great thickness of peat has accumulated in the Valley
of the Somme ; and antecedently to the first growth of peat,
there had been time for the extinction of a great many mam
malia, requiring, perhaps, as shown at p. 144, a lapse of
ages many times greater than that demanded for the for
mation of thirty feet of peat, for since the earliest growth of
the latter there has been no change in the species of mammalia
in Europe.
Should future researches, therefore, confirm the opinion
that the Natchez man coexisted with the mastodon, it would
not enhance the value of the geological evidence in favour of
man's antiquity, but merely render the delta of the Mississippi
available as a chronometer, by which the lapse of post-pliocene
time could be measured somewhat less vaguely than by any
means of measuring which have as yet been discovered or
rendered available in Europe.
206 CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS CHAP. x:i.
CHAPTER XII.
ANTIQUITY OF MAN RELATIVELY TO THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND TO
THE EXISTING FAUNA AND FLORA.
CHRONOLOGICAL RELATION OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD, AND THE EARLIEST
KNOWN SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE SERIES OF TERTIARY
DEPOSITS IN NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK IMMEDIATELY ANTECEDENT TO
THE GLACIAL PERIOD GRADUAL REFRIGERATION OF CLIMATE PROVED
BY THE MARINE SHELLS OF SUCCESSIVE GROUPS MARINE NEWER
PLIOCENE SHELLS OF NORTHERN CHARACTER, NEAR WOODBRIDGE .
SECTION OF THE NORFOLK CLIFFS NORWICH CRAG FOREST BED
AND FLUVIO-MARINE STRATA FOSSIL PLANTS AND MAMMALIA OF THE
SAME OVERLYING BOULDER CLAY AND CONTORTED DRIFT NEWER
FRESHWATER FORMATION OF MUNDESLEY COMPARED TO THAT OF
HOXNE GREAT OSCILLATIONS OF LEVEL IMPLIED BY THE SERIES OF
STRATA IN THE NORFOLK CLIFFS EARLIEST KNOWN DATE OF MAN
LONG SUBSEQUENT TO THE EXISTING FAUNA AND FLORA.
THEEQUENT allusions have been made in the preceding
J- pages to a period called the glacial, to which no refe
rence is made in the Chronological Table of Formations given
at p. 7. It comprises a long series of ages, chiefly of post-
tertiary date, during which the power of cold, whether exerted
by glaciers on the land, or by floating ice on the sea, was
greater in the northern hemisphere, and extended to more
southern latitudes than now.
It often happens that when in any given region we have
pushed back our geological investigations as far as we can, in
search of evidence of the first appearance of man in Europe,
we are stopped by arriving at what is called the e boulder
clay ' or * northern drift.' This formation is usually quite
destitute of organic remains, so that the thread of our in
quiry into the history of the animate creation, as well as of
man, is abruptly cut short. The interruption, however, is by
CHAP. xil. OF THE GLACIAL AND HUMAN PERIODS. 207
no means encountered at the same point of time in every
district. In the case of the Danish peat, for example, we
get no farther back than the recent period of our Chrono
logical Table (p. 7), and then meet with the boulder clay ;
and it is the same in the valley of the Clyde, where the
marine strata contain the ancient canoes before described
(p. 47), and where nothing intervenes between that recent for
mation and the glacial drift. But we have seen that, in the
neighbourhood of Bedford (p. 155), the memorials of man can
be traced much farther back into the past, namely, into the
post-pliocene epoch, when the human race was contemporary
with the mammoth and many other species of mammalia
now extinct. Nevertheless, in Bedfordshire as in Denmark,
the formation next antecedent in date to that containing the
human implements is still a member of the glacial drift,
with its erratic blocks.
If the reader remembers what was stated in the Eighth
Chapter, p. 144, as to the absence or extreme scarcity of
human bones and works of art in all strata, whether marine
or fresh-water, even in those formed in the immediate prox
imity of land inhabited by millions of human beings, he will
be prepared for the general dearth of human memorials in
glacial formations, whether recent, post-pliocene, or of more
ancient date. If there were a few wanderers over lands
covered with glaciers, or over seas infested with ice-bergs,
and if a few of them left their bones or weapons in moraines
or in marine drift, the chances, after the lapse of thousands of
years, of a geologist meeting with one of them must be infini-
tesimally small.
It is natural, therefore, to encounter a gap in the. regular
sequence of geological monuments bearing on the past history
of man, wherever we have proofs of glacial action having
prevailed with intensity, as it has done over large parts of
Europe and North America, in the post-pliocene period. As
208 INCREASING COLD SHOWN BY CHAP. xn.
we advance into more southern latitudes approaching the
50th parallel of latitude in Europe, and the 40th in North
America, this disturbing cause ceases to oppose a bar to our
inquiries ; but even then, in consequence of the fragmentary
nature of all geological annals, our progress is inevitably slow
in constructing any thing like a connected chain of history,
which can only be effected by bringing the links of the chain
found in one area to supply the information which is wanting
in another.
The least interrupted series of consecutive documents to
which we can refer in the British Islands, when we desire to
connect the tertiary with the post-tertiary periods, are found
in the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex ; and I shall
speak of them in this chapter, as they have a direct bearing
on the relations of the human and glacial periods, which will
be the subject of several of the following chapters. The
fossil shells of the deposits in question clearly point to a
gradual refrigeration of climate, from a temperature some
what warmer than that now prevailing in our latitudes to one
of intense cold ; and the successive steps which have marked
the coming on of the increasing cold are matters of no small
geological interest.
It will be seen in the Table at p. 7, that next before the
post-tertiary period stands the pliocene, divided into the
older and newer. The shelly and sandy beds representing
these periods in Norfolk and Suffolk are termed provincially
Crag, having under that name been long used in agriculture
to fertilise soils deficient in calcareous matter, or to render
them less stiff and impervious. In Suffolk, the older pliocene
strata called Crag are divisible into the Coralline and the
Eed Crags, the former being the older of the two. In Norfolk,
a more modern formation, commonly termed the 6 Norwich,'
or sometimes the < mammalif erous ' Crag, which is referable to
the newer pliocene period, occupies large areas.
CHAP. XII.
NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK TERTIARIES.
209
We are indebted to Mr. Searles Wood, F.Gr.S., for an
admirable monograph on the fossil shells of these British
pliocene formations. He has not himself given us an ana
lysis of the results of his treatise, but the following tables have
been drawn up for me by Mr. S. P. Woodward, the well-
known author of the 6 Manual of the Mollusca, Eecent and
Fossil' (London, 1853-6), in order to illustrate some of the
general conclusions to which Mr. Wood's careful examination
of 442 species of mollusca has led.
Number of known Species of Marine Testacea in the three English
Pliocene Deposits, called the Norwich, the Red, and the Coralline
Crags.
Brachiopoda
Conchifera
Gasteropoda
Total
6
206
230
442
Distribution of the above Marine Testacea.
Number of Species.
Norwich Crag . . . .81
Bed Crag .... . . 225
Coralline Crag . . .327
Species common to the
Norwich and Ked Crag (not in Cor. ) 33
Norwich and Coralline ( not in Ked) 4
Ked and Coralline (not in Norwich) 116
Norwich, Ked, and Coralline . 19*
Proportion of Eecent to Extinct Species.
Recent.
Norwich Crag . . . .69
Ked Crag 130
Coralline Crag . . . .168
Extinct.
12
95
159
Per-centage of
Recent.
85
57
51
Recent Species not living now in British Seas.
Norwich Crag
Ked Crag
Coralline Crag
Northern Species.
. 12
. 8
2
Southern.
16
27
* These 19 species must be added to the numbers 33, 4, and 116 respectively
in order to obtain the full amount of common species in each of those cases.
210 INCKEASING COLD SHOWN BY CHAP. xn.
In the above list I have not included the shells of the
glacial beds of the Clyde and of several other British deposits
of newer origin than the Norwich Crag, in which nearly all
perhaps all the species are recent. The land and fresh
water shells, thirty-two in number, have also been purposely
omitted, as well as three species of London Clay shells, sus
pected by Mr. Wood himself to be spurious.
By far the greater number of the recent marine species
included in these tables are still inhabitants of the British
seas ; but even these differ considerably in their relative
abundance, some of the commonest of the Crag shells being
now extremely scarce; as, for example, Buccinum Dalei,
and others, rarely met with in a fossil state, being now very
common, as Murex erinaceus and Cardium echinatum.
The last table throws light on a marked alteration in the
climate of the three successive periods. It will be seen that
in the Coralline Crag there are twenty-seven southern shells,
including twenty-six Mediterranean, and one West Indian
species (JErato Maugerice). Of these only thirteen occur in
the Eed Crag, associated with three new southern species,
while the whole of them disappear from the Norwich beds.
On the other hand, the Coralline Crag contains only two arctic
shells, Admete viridula and Limopsis pygmcea ; whereas
the Eed Crag contains, as stated in the table, eight northern
species, all of which recur in the Norwich Crag, with the
addition of four others, also inhabitants of the arctic regions ;
so that there is good evidence of a continual refrigeration of
climate during the pliocene period in Britain. The presence
of these northern shells cannot be explained away by sup
posing that they were inhabitants of the deep parts of the
sea; for some of them, such as Tellina calcarea and Astarte
borealis, occur plentifully, and sometimes with the valves
united by their ligament, in company with other littoral shells,
such as Mya arenaria and Littorina rudis, and evidently
CHAP. xii. NORFOLK AND SUFFOLK TERTIAKIES. 211
not thrown up from deep water. Yet the northern character
of the Norwich Crag is not fully shown by simply saying that
it contains twelve northern species, now no longer found in
British seas, since several boreal shells which still linger in
the Scottish deeps do not abound there as they did in the
latter days of the Crag period. It is the predominance of
certain genera and species which satisfies the mind of a
conch ologist as to the arctic character of the Norwich Crag.
In like manner, it is the presence of such genera as Pyrula,
Columbella, Terebra, Cassidaria, Pholadomya, Lingula,
Discina, and others which give a southern aspect to the
Coralline Crag shells.
The cold, which had gone on increasing from the time of
the Coralline to that of the Norwich Crag, continued, though
not perhaps without some oscillations of temperature, to
become more and more severe after the accumulation of the
Norwich Crag, until it reached its maximum in what has been
called the glacial epoch. The marine fauna of this last
period contains, both in Ireland and Scotland, recent species
of mollusca now living in Greenland and other seas far north
of the areas where we find their remains in a fossil state.
The refrigeration of climate from the time of the older
to that of the newer Pliocene strata is not now announced
for the first time, as it was inferred from a study of the Crag
shells in 1846 by the late Edward Forbes.*
The most southern point to which the marine beds of the
Norwich Crag have yet been traced is at Chillesford, near
Woodb ridge, in Suffolk, about eighty miles north-east of
London, where, as Messrs. Prestwich and Searles Wood have
pointed out,f they exhibit decided marks of having been
deposited in a sea of a much lower temperature than that now
prevailing in the same latitude. Out of twenty-three shells
* Manual of Geological Survey, f Quarterly Geological Journal,
London, 1846, p. 391. 1849, vol. v. p. 345.
P 2
212 CHILLESFOED ARCTIC SHELLS. CH.4P. xn.
obtained in that locality from argillaceous strata twenty feet
thick, two only, namely, Nucula Cobboldice and Tellina
obliqua, are extinct, and not a few of the other species, such
as Leda arctica, Cardium groenlandicum, Lucina borealis,
Cyprina islandica, Panopcea norvegica, and Mya truncata,
betray a northern, and some of them an arctic character.
These Chillesford beds are supposed to be somewhat more
modern than any of the purely marine strata of the Norwich
Crag exhibited by the sections of the Norfolk cliffs NW. of
Cromer, which I am about to describe. Yet they probably
preceded in date the ' Forest Bed ' and fluvio-marine deposits
of those same cliffs. They are, therefore, of no small im
portance in reference to the chronology of the glacial period,
since they afford evidence of an assemblage of fossil shells
with a proportion of between eight and nine in a hundred of
extinct species occurring so far south as lat. 53 N., and indi
cating so cold a climate as to imply that the glacial period
commenced before the close of the newer pliocene era.
The annexed section will give a general idea of the ordinary
succession of the newer pliocene and post-pliocene strata which
rest upon the chalk in the Norfolk and Suffolk cliffs. These
cliffs vary in height from fifty to above three hundred feet.
At the north-western extremity of the section at Weybourne
(beyond the limits of the annexed diagram), and from thence
to Cromer, a distance of seven miles, the Norwich crag, a marine
deposit, reposes immediately upon the chalk. A vast majority
of its shells are of living species now inhabiting the British
seas, such as Cardium edule, Cyprina islandica, and Scalaria
groenlandica, and some few extinct, as Fusus striatus, Tellina
obliqua^ and Nucula Cobboldice. At Cromer jetty this for
mation thins out, as expressed in the diagram at A ; and to the
south we find No. 3, or what is commonly called the ' Forest
Bed,' reposing immediately upon the chalk, and occupying as
it were the place previously held by the marine crag No. 2.
<0
213
*:;;::
o
iiiii C
s
&-$
CO
co i^
214 SECTION OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. CHAF. xn.
This buried forest has been traced for more than forty miles,
being exposed at certain seasons and states of the beach
between high and low water mark. It extends from Cromer
to near Kessingland, and consists of the stumps of numerous
trees standing erect, with their roots attached to them, and
penetrating in all directions into the loam or ancient vegetable
soil on which they grew. They mark the site of a forest which
existed there for a long time, since, besides the erect trunks of
trees, some of them two and three feet in diameter, there is a
vast accumulation of vegetable matter in the immediately
overlying clays. Thirty years ago, when I first examined this
bed, I saw many trees, with their roots in the old soil, laid
open at the base of the cliff near Happisburgh ; and long
before my visit, other observers, and among them the late
Mr. J. C. Taylor, had noticed the buried forest. Of late
years it has been repeatedly seen at many points by
Mr. Grunn, and, after the great storms of the autumn of 1861,
by Mr. King. In order to expose the stumps to view, a vast
body of sand and shingle must be cleared away by the force
of the waves.
As the sea is always gaining on the land, new sets of trees
are brought to light from time to time, so that the breadth
as well as length of the area of ancient forest land seems to
have been considerable. Next above No. 2, we find a series
of sands and clays with lignite (No. 3'), sometimes ten feet
thick, and containing alternations of fluviatile and marine
strata, implying that the old forest land, which may at first
have been considerably elevated above the level of the sea,
had sunk down so as to be occasionally overflowed by a river,
and at other times by the salt waters of an estuary. There
were probably several oscillations of level which assisted in
bringing about these changes, during which trees were often
uprooted and laid prostrate, giving rise to layers of lignite.
Occasionally marshes were formed and peaty matter accumu-
CHAP. xii. FOREST BED OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. 215
lated, after which salt water again predominated, so that
species of Mytilus, My a, Leda, and other marine genera,
lived in the same area where the Unio, Cyclas, and Paludina
had nourished for a time. That the marine shells lived and
died on the spot, an$ were not thrown up by the waves during
a storm, is proved, as Mr. King has remarked, by the fact
that at West Eunton, NW. of Cromer, the My a truncata
and Leda myalis are found with both valves united and
erect in the loam, all. with their posterior or siphun-
cular extremities uppermost. This attitude affords as good
evidence to the conchologist that those mollusca lived and
died on the spot as the upright position of the trees proves to
the botanist that there was a forest over the chalk east of
Cromer.
Between the stumps of the buried forest, and in the lignite
above them, are many well-preserved cones of the Scotch and
spruce firs, Pinus sylvestris, and Pinus Abies. The specific
names of these fossils were determined for me in 1840, by a
botanist of no less authority than the late Kobert Brown ; and
Professor Heer has lately examined a large collection from
the same stratum, and recognised among the cones of the
spruce some which had only the central part or axis remain
ing, the rest having been bitten off, precisely in the same
manner as when in our woods the squirrel has been feeding
on the seeds. There is also in the forest-bed a great quan
tity of resin in lumps, resembling that gathered for use,
according to Professor Heer, in Switzerland, from beneath
spruce firs.
The following is a list of some of the plants which were
collected by the Rev, S. Gr. King, in 1861, from the forest bed,
and named by Professor Heer :
Pinus sylvestris, Scotch fir . . Mundesley.
Pinus Abies , spruce fir ...
216 FOSSIL PLANTS AND MAMMALIA CHAP. xii.
Taxus baccata, yew . . . Mundesley.
Prunus spinosa, common sloe .
Menyanthes trifoliata, buckbean .
Nymphcea alba, white water-lily .
Nuphar luteum, yellow water-lily .
Ceratophyllum demorsum, hornwort .
Potamogeton, pondweed ...
Alnus, alder . - . . . Bacton.
Quercus, oak ....
The insects, so far as they are known, including several
species of Donacea, are, like the plants and freshwater shells,
of living species. It may be remarked, however, that the
Scotch fir has been confined in historical times to the northern
parts of the British isles, and the spruce fir is nowhere in
digenous in Great Britain. The other plants are such as
might now be found in Norfolk, and many of them indicate
fenny or marshy ground.
When we consider the familiar aspect of the flora, the
accompanying mammalia are certainly most extraordinary.
There are no less than two elephants, a rhinoceros and
hippopotamus, a large extinct beaver, and several large
estuarian and marine mammalia, such as the walrus, the
narwhal, and the whale.
The following is a list of some of the species of which the
bones have been collected by Messrs. Gunn and King, and
named by Dr. Falconer and other geologists :
Mammalia of the Forest and Lignite Beds below the Glacial
Drift of the Norfolk Cliffs.
Elephas meridionalis.
Elephas primigenius var.
Elephas antiquus.
Eh >-nocero8 etruscus.
CHAP. xil. OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. 217
Hippopotamus (major ?).
Sue.
Equus (fossilis ?).
Bos.
Cervus Capreolus ? and other species of Cervus.
Arvicola amphibia.
Castor trogontherium.
Castor europceus.
Narwhal, walrus, and large whale, or Balcenoptera ?
Mr. Gunn informs me that two large whales were found in
the fluvio-marine beds at Bacton, and that the vertebraB of
one of them, shown to Professor Owen, were said by him to
imply that the animal was sixty feet long. A narwhal's tusk
was discovered by Mr. King near Cromer, and the remains of
a walrus. No less than three species of elephant, as deter
mined by Dr. Falconer, have been obtained from the strata
3 and 3', of which, according to Mr. King, E. meridionalis
is the most common, the mammoth next in abundance, and
the third, E. antiquus, comparatively rare.
The freshwater shells accompanying the fossil quadrupeds,
above enumerated, are such as now inhabit rivers and ponds
in England ; but among them, as at Runton, between the
( forest bed ' and the glacial deposits, a remarkable variety
of the Cydas amnica occurs, fig. 28, p. 218, identical with
that which accompanies the Elephas antiquus at Ilford and
Grays in the valley of the Thames.
All the freshwater shells of the beds intervening between
the forest-bed No. 3,' and the glacial formation 4, fig. 27,
are of recent species. As to the small number of marine
shells occurring in the same fluvio-marine series, I have seen
none which belonged to extinct species, although one or two
have been cited by authors. I am in doubt, therefore,
whether to class the forest bed and overlying strata as post-
218 GLACIAL DEPOSITS CHAP. xn.
pliocene, or to consider them as beds of passage between the
newer pliocene and post-pliocene periods. The fluvio-marine
Fig. 28
Cyclas (Pisidium) amnica var. ?
The two middle figures are of the natural size.
series usually terminates upwards in finely laminated sands
and clays without fossils, on which reposes the boulder clay.
This formation, No. 4, is of very varying thickness. Its
glacial character is shown, not only by the absence of stratifi
cation, and the great size and angularity of some of the
included blocks of distant origin, but also by the polished
and scratched surfaces of such of them as are hard enough to
retain any markings.
Near Cromer, blocks of granite from six to eight feet in
diameter have been met with, and smaller ones of sienite,
porphyry, and trap, besides the wreck of the London clay,
chalk, oolite, and lias, mixed with more ancient fossiliferous
rocks. Erratics of Scandinavian origin occur chiefly in the
lower portions of the till. I came to the conclusion in 1834,
that they had really come from Norway and Sweden, after
having in that year traced the course of a continuous stream
of such blocks from those countries to Denmark, and across
the Elbe, through Westphalia, to the borders of Holland.
It is not surprising that they should then reappear on our
eastern coast between the Tweed and the Thames, regions not
half so remote from parts of Norway as are many Russian
erratics from the sources whence they came.
According to the observations of the Rev. J. Grunn and the
CHAP. xii. OF NORFOLK CLIFFS. 219
late Mr. Trimmer, the glacial drift in the cliffs at Lowestoff
consists of two divisions, the lower of which abounds in the
Scandinavian blocks, supposed to have come from the
north-east ; while the upper, probably brought by a current
from the north-west, contains chiefly fragments of oolitic rocks,
more rolled than those of the lower deposit. The united
thickness of the two divisions without reckoning some
interposed laminated beds, is eighty feet, but it probably ex
ceeds one hundred feet near Happisburgh.* Although these
subdivisions of the drift may be only of local importance, they
help to show the changes of currents and other conditions,
and the great lapse of time which the accumulation of so
varied a series of deposits must have required.
The lowest part of the glacial till, resting on the laminated
clays before mentioned, is very even and regular, while its
upper surface is remarkable for the unevenness of its outline,
owing partly, in all likelihood, to denudation, but still more
to other causes presently to be discussed.
The overlying strata of sand and gravel, No. 5, p. 213, often
display a most singular derangement in their stratification,
which in many places seems to have a very intimate re
lation to the irregularities of outline in the subjacent till.
There are some cases, however, -where the upper strata are
much bent, while the lower beds of the same series have con
tinued horizontal. Thus the annexed section (fig. 29)
represents a cliff about fifty feet high, at the bottom of which
is till, or unstratified clay, containing boulders, having an
even horizontal surface, on which repose conformably beds of
laminated clay and sand about five feet thick, which, in their
turn, are succeeded by vertical, bent, and contorted layers of
sand and loam twenty feet thick, the whole being covered by
flint gravel. The curves of the variously coloured beds of
* Quarterly Geological Journal, vol. vii. p. 21.
220
GLACIAL DEPOSITS
CHAP. XII.
loose sand, loam, and pebbles, are so complicated that not
only may we sometimes find portions of them which maintain
Fig. 29
Gravel
Till
Cliff 50 feet high between Bacton Gap and Mundesley.
their verticality to a height of ten or fifteen feet, but they
have also been folded upon themselves in such a manner
that continuous layers might be thrice pierced in one perpen
dicular boring.
At some points there is an apparent folding of the beds
round a central nucleus, as at a, fig. 30, where the strata seem
Fig. 31
Fig. 30
Folding of the strata between
East and West Kunton.
Section of concentric beds west of Cromer.
1 Blue clay. 3 Yellow sand.
2 White sand. 4 Striped loam and clay.
5 Laminated blue clay.
bent round a small mass of chalk, or, as in fig. 31, where the
blue clay, No. 1, is in the centre ; and where the other strata,
2, 3, 4, 5, are coiled round it ; the entire mass being twenty
CHAP. XII.
OF NORFOLK CLIFFS.
221
feet in perpendicular height. This appearance of concentric
arrangement around a nucleus is, nevertheless, delusive, being
produced by the intersection of beds bent into a convex
shape ; and that which seems the nucleus being, in fact, the
innermost bed of the series, which has become partially visible
by the removal of the protuberant portions of the outer
layers.
To the north of Cromer are other fine illustrations of con
torted drift reposing on a floor of chalk horizontally stratified
and having a level surface. These phenomena, in themselves
sufficiently difficult of explanation, are rendered still more
anomalous by the occasional inclosure in the drift of huge
fragments of chalk many yards in diameter. One striking
instance occurs west of Sherringham, where an enormous
pinnacle of chalk, between seventy and eighty feet in height,
is flanked on both sides by vertical layers of loam, clay, and
gravel (fig. 32).
Fig. 32
Included pinnacle of chalk at Old Hythe point, west of Sherringham.
d Chalk with regular layers of chalk flints.
c Layer called ' the pan,' of chalk, flints, and marine shells of recent
species, cemented by oxide of iron.
This chalky fragment is only one of many detached masses
which have been included in the drift, and forced along with
222 CONTORTED DRIFT. CHAP. xn.
it into their present position. The level surface of the chalk
in situ (d) may be traced for miles along the coast, where it
has escaped the violent movements to which the incumbent
drift has been exposed.*
We are called upon, then, to explain how any force can
have been exerted against the upper masses, so as to produce
movements in which the subjacent strata have not partici
pated. It may be answered that, if we conceive the till and
its boulders to have been drifted to their present place by
ice, the lateral pressure may have been supplied by the strand
ing of ice-islands. We learn, from the observations of
Messrs. Dease and Simpson in the polar regions, that such
islands, when they run aground, push before them large
mounds of shingle and sand. It is therefore probable that
they often cause great alterations in the arrangement of pliant
and incoherent strata forming the upper part of shoals or
submerged banks, the inferior portions of the same remaining
unmoved. Or many of the complicated curvatures of these
layers of loose sand and gravel may have been due to another
cause, the melting on the spot of icebergs and coast ice in
which successive deposits of pebbles, sand, ice, snow, and mud,
together with huge masses of rock fallen from cliffs, may have
become interstratified. Ice-islands so constituted often cap
size when afloat, and gravel once horizontal may have assumed,
before the associated ice was melted, an inclined or vertical
position. The packing of ice forced up on a coast may lead
to a similar derangement in a frozen conglomerate of sand or
shingle, and, as Mr. Trimmer has suggested, f alternate layers
of earthy matter may have sunk down slowly during the
liquefaction of the intercalated ice so as to assume the most
fantastic and anomalous positions, while the strata below,
* For a full account of the drift of 104, May, 1840.
East Norfolk, see a paper by the f Quarterly Journal, Geological
author, Philosophical Magazine, No. Society, vol. vii. pp. 22, 30.
CHAP. xii. MUNDESLEY FRESHWATER FORMATION. 223
and those afterwards thrown down above, may be perfectly
horizontal (see above).
In most cases where the principal contortions of the layers
of gravel and sand have a decided correspondence with deep
indentations in the underlying till, the hypothesis of the
melting of Jarge lumps and masses of ice once mixed up with
the till affords the most natural explanation of the phenomena.
The quantity of ice now seen in the cliffs near Behring's
Straits, in which the remains of fossil elephants are common,
and the huge fragments of solid ice which Meyendorf dis
covered in Siberia, after piercing through a considerable
thickness of incumbent soil, free from ice, is in favour of
such an hypothesis, the partial failure of support necessarily
giving rise to foldings in the overlying and previously hori
zontal layers, as in the case of creeps in coal mines.*
In the diagram of the cliffs at p. 213, the bent and con
torted beds No. 5, last alluded to, are represented as covered
by undisturbed beds of gravel and sand, No. 6. These are
usually destitute of organic remains ; but at some points
marine shells of recent species are said to have been found in
them. They afford evidence at many points of repeated
denudation and redeposition, and may be the monuments of
a long series of ages.
Mundesley Post-glacial Freshwater Formation.
In the range of cliffs above described at Mundesley, about
two miles south-east of Cromer, a fine example is seen of a
freshwater formation, newer than all those already mentioned,
a deposit which has filled up a depression hollowed out of all
the older beds 3, 4, and 5, of the section, p. 213.
When I examined this line of coast in 1839, the section
alluded to was not so clearly laid open to view as it has
* See Manual of Geology, by the author, p. 51.
224
MUNDESLEY FRESHWATER FORMATION.
CHAP. XII.
been of late years, and finding at that period not a few of the
fossils in the lignite beds, No. 3', above the forest bed, iden
tical in species with those from the post-glacial deposits, B c,
I supposed the whole to have been of contemporaneous
03 1
Section of the newer freshwater formation in the cliffs at Mimdesley, two
miles SE. of Cromer, drawn up by the Eev. S. W. King.
Height of cliff where lowest, 35 feet above high water.
Older Series.
1 Fundamental chalk, below the beach line.
3 Forest bed, with elephant, rhinoceros, stag, &c., and with tree roots
and stumps, also below the beach line.
3' Finely laminated sands and clays, with thin layer of lignite, and
shells of Cyclas, and Valvata, and with Mytilus in some beds.
4 Glacial boulder till.
5 Contorted drift.
6 Gravel overlying contorted drift.
N.B. No. 2 of the section, fig. 27, at p. 213, is wanting here.
Newer Freshwater Beds.
A Coarse river gravel, in layers inclined against the till and laminated
sands.
B Black peaty deposit, with shells of Anodon, Valvata, Cyclas, Suc-
cinea, Limnea, Paludina, &c., seeds of Ceratophyllum demersum,
Nuphar lutea, scales and bones of pike, perch, salmon, &c.,
elytra of Donacia, Copris, Harpalus, and other beetles.
c Yellow sands.
D Drift gravel
origin, and so described them in my paper on the Norfolk
cliffs.*
Mr. Gunn was the first to perceive this mistake, which he
explained to me on the spot when I revisited Mundesley in
the autumn of 1859, in company with Dr. Hooker and
* Philosophical Magazine, vol. xvi. May 1840, p. 345.
CHAP. xii. MUNDESLEY FRESHWATER FORMATION. 225
Mr. King. The last-named geologist has had the kindness
to draw up for me the annexed diagram of the various beds
which he has recently studied in detail.*
The formations 3, 4, and 5, already described, p. 213, were
evidently once continuous, for they may be followed for.
miles NW. and SE. without a break, and always in the same
order. A valley or river channel was cut through them, pro
bably during the gradual upheaval of the country, and the
hollow became afterwards the receptacle of the comparatively
modern freshwater beds, A, B, c, and D. They may well re
present a silted up river-channel, which remained for a time
in the state of a lake or mere, and in which the black peaty
mass, B, accumulated by a very slow growth over the gravel
of the river-bed A. . In B, we find remains of some of the
same plants which were enumerated as common in the
ancient lignite in 3', such as the yellow water-lily and pond-
wort, together with some fresh water shells which occur in
the same fluvio-marine series 3'.
Fig. 34
Paludina marginata Michaud. (P. minuta Strickland.)
Hydrobia marginata.^
The middle figure is of the natural size.
The only shell which I found not referable to a British spe
cies is the minute paludina, fig. 34, already alluded to, p. 1 64.
* Mr. Prestwich has given a correct one, as in Paludina), and therefore to
account of this section in a paper read be referable to the Hydrobia, a sub-
to the British Association, Oxford, genus of Eissoa. But this species is
1860. See Geologist's Magazine, always associated with freshwater
vol. iv. 1861. shells, while the Kissose frequent
f This shell is said to have a sub- marine and brackish waters.
spiral operculum (not a concentric
226 COMPAEISON OF MUNDESLEY CHAP. xii.
When I showed the scales and teeth of the pike, perch,
roach, and salmon, which I obtained from this formation, to
Mr. Agassiz, he thought they varied so much from their
nearest living representatives that they might rank as distinct
species ; but Mr. Yarrell doubted the propriety of so distin
guishing them. The insects, like the shells and plants, are
identical, so far as they are known, with living British
species. No progress has yet been made at Mundesley in dis
covering the contemporary mammalia.
By referring to the description and section of the freshwater
deposit at p. 159, the reader will at once perceive the striking
analogy of the Mundesley and Hoxne deposits, the latter so
productive of flint implements of the Amiens type. Both of
them, like the Bedford gravel with flint tools and the bones of
extinct mammalia (noticed at p. 164), are postglacial. It
will also be seen that a long series of events, accompanied by
changes in physical geography, intervened between the ' forest
bed,' No. 3, fig. 27, p. 213, when the Elephas meridionalis
flourished, and the period of the Mundesley fluviatile beds
A, B, c ; just as in France I have shown, p. 199, that the
same E. meridionalis belonged to a system of drainage
different from and anterior to that with which the flint im
plements of the old alluvium of the Somme and the Seine
were connected.
Before the growth of the ancient forest, No. 3, fig. 33, the
Mastodon arvernensis, a large proboscidian, characteristic of
the Norwich crag, appears to have died out, or to have become
scarce, as no remains of it have yet been found in the Norfolk
cliffs. There was, no doubt, time for other modifications in
the mammalian fauna between the era of the marine beds,
No. 2, p. 213 (the shells of which imply permanent sub
mergence beneath the sea), and the accumulation of the
uppermost of the fluvio-marine, and lignite beds, No. 3', which
overlie both Nos. 3 and 2, or the buried forest and the crag.
CHAP. xir. AND HOXNE DEPOSITS. 227
In the interval we must suppose repeated oscillations of level,
during which land covered with trees, an estuary with its
freshwater shells, and the sea with its Mya truncata and
other mollusca still retaining their erect position, gained by
turns the ascendency. These changes were accompanied by
some denudation followed by a grand submergence of several
hundred feet, probably brought about slowly, and when
floating ice aided in transporting erratic blocks from great
distances. The glacial till, No. 4, then originated, and the
gravel and sands, No. 5, were afterwards superimposed on
the boulder clay, first in horizontal beds, which became sub
sequently contorted. These were covered in their turn by
other layers of gravel and sand, No. 6, pp. 213 and 224, the
downward movement still continuing.
The entire thickness of the beds above the chalk at some
points near the coast, and the height at which they now are
raised, are such as to show that the subsidence of the country
after the growth of the forest bed, exceeded four hundred feet.
The re-elevation must have amounted to nearly as many feet,
as the site of the ancient forest, originally subaerial, has been
brought up again to within a few feet of high-water mark.
Lastly, after all these events, and probably during the final
process of emergence, the valley was scooped out in which
the newer freshwater strata of Mundesley, fig. 33, p. 224, were
gradually deposited.
Throughout the whole of this succession of geographical
changes, the flora and invertebrate fauna of Europe appear
to have undergone no important revolution in their specific
characters. The plants of the forest bed belonged already to
what has been called the Germanic flora. The mollusca, the
insects, and even some of the mammalia, such as the European
beaver and roebuck, were the same as those now coexisting
with man. Yet the oldest memorials of our species at present
discovered in Great Britain are post-glacial, or posterior in date
Q 2
228 AGE OF MAN PREGLACIAL. CHAP. xn.
to the boulder clay, No. 4, pp. 213 and 224. The position of the
Hoxne flint implements corresponds with that of the Mundesley
beds, from A to D, p. 224, and the most likely stratum in which
to find hereafter flint tools is no doubt the gravel A of that
section which has all the appearance of an old river-bed. No
flint tools have yet been observed there, but had the old
alluvium of Amiens or Abbeville occurred in the Norfolk
cliffs instead of the Valley of the Somme, and had we de
pended on the waves of the sea instead of the labour of many
hundred workmen continued for twenty years, for exposing
the flint implements to view, we might have remained ignorant
to this day of the fossil relics brought to light by M. Boucher
de Perthes, and those who have followed up his researches.
Neither need we despair of one day meeting with the signs
of man's existence in the forest bed No. 3, or in the overlying
strata 3', on the ground of any uncongeniality in the climate
or incongruity in the state of the animate creation with the
well-being of our species. For the present we must be con
tent to wait and consider that we have made no investigations
which entitle us to wonder that the bones or stone weapons
of the era of the Elephas meridionalis have failed to come
to light. If any such lie hid in those strata, and should here
after be revealed to us, they would carry back the antiquity
of man to a distance of time probably more than twice as
great as that which separates our era from that of the most
ancient of the tool-bearing gravels yet discovered in Picardy,
or elsewhere. But even then the reader will perceive that
the age of man, though preglacial, would be so modern in
the great geological calendar, as given at p. 7, that he would
scarcely date so far back as the commencement of the post-
pliocene period.
CHAP. xin. THE GLACIAL PERIOD. 229
CHAPTER XIII.
CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND THE
CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE CLOSE OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD
AND THE EARLIEST GEOLOGICAL SIGNS OF THE APPEARANCE OF MAN
EFFECTS OF GLACIERS AND ICEBERGS IN POLISHING AND SCORING
ROCKS SCANDINAVIA ONCE ENCRUSTED WITH ICE LIKE GREENLAND
OUTWARD MOVEMENT OF CONTINENTAL ICE IN GREENLAND MELD
CLIMATE OF GREENLAND IN THE MIOCENE PERIOD ERRATICS OF
RECENT PERIOD IN SWEDEN GLACIAL STATE OF SWEDEN IN THE POST-
PLIOCENE PERIOD SCOTLAND FORMERLY ENCRUSTED WITH ICE ITS
SUBSEQUENT SUBMERGENCE AND RE-ELEVATION LATEST CHANGES
PRODUCED BY GLACIERS IN SCOTLAND REMAINS OF THE MAMMOTH
AND REINDEER IN SCOTCH BOULDER CLAY PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN
EOY FORMED IN GLACIER LAKES COMPARATIVELY MODERN DATE OF
THESE SHELVES.
THE chronological relations of the human and glacial pe
riods were frequently alluded to in the last chapter, and
the sections obtained near Bedford (p. 164), and at Hoxne,
in Suffolk (p. 168), and a general view of the Norfolk cliffs,
have taught us that the earliest signs of man's appearance in
the British Isles, hitherto detected, are of post-glacial date,
in the sense of being posterior to the grand submergence of
England beneath the waters of the glacial sea. But long
after that period, when nearly the whole of England North of
the Thames and Bristol Channel lay submerged for ages, the
bottom of the sea, loaded with mud and stones melted out of
floating ice, was upheaved, and glaciers filled for a second
time the valleys of many mountainous regions. We may now
therefore inquire whether the peopling of Europe by the
human race and by the mammoth and other mammalia
230 SUPERFICIAL TRACES OF THE EFFECTS CHAP. XIII.
now extinct, was brought about during this concluding phase
of the glacial epoch.
Although it may be impossible in the present state of our
knowledge to come to a positive conclusion on this head, I
know of no inquiry better fitted to clear up our views respec
ting the geological state of the northern hemisphere at the
time when the fabricators of the flint implements of the
Amiens type flourished. I shall therefore now proceed to
consider the chronological relations of that ancient people
with the final retreat of the glaciers from the mountains of
Scandinavia, Scotland, Wales, and Switzerland.
Superficial Markings and Deposits left by Glaciers and
Icebergs.
In order fully to discuss this question, I must begin by re
ferring to some of the newest theoretical opinions entertained
on the glacial question. When treating of this subject in the
'Principles of Geology,' ch. xv., and in the ' Manual (or Ele
ments) of Greology,' ch. xi., I have stated that the whole mass
of the ice in a glacier is in constant motion, and that the
blocks of stone detached from boundary precipices, and the
mud and sand swept down by avalanches of snow, or by rain
from the surrounding heights, are lodged upon the surface
and slowly borne along in lengthened mounds, called in
Switzerland moraines. These accumulations of rocky frag
ments and detrital matter are left at the termination of the
glacier, where it melts in a confused heap called the ' terminal
moraine,' which is unstratified, because all the blocks, large
and small, as well as the sand and the finest mud, are carried
to equal distances and quietly deposited in a confused mass
without being subjected to the sorting power of running
water, which would convey the finer materials farther than
the coarser ones, and would produce, as the strength of the
CHAP. Xiir. PRODUCED BY GLACIERS AND ICEBERGS. 231
current varied from time to time in the same place, a stratified
arrangement.
In those regions where glaciers reach the sea, and where
large masses of ice break off and float away, moraines, such
as I have just alluded to, may be transported to indefinite
distances, and may be deposited on the bottom of the sea
wherever the ice happens to melt. If the liquefaction takes
place when the berg has run aground and is stationary, and
if there be no current, the heap of angular and rounded stones,
mixed with sand and mud, may fall to the bottom in an un-
stratified form called 'till ' in Scotland, and which has been
shown in the last chapter to abound in the Norfolk cliffs ;
but should the action of a current intervene at certain points
or at certain seasons, then the materials will be sorted as they
fall, and arranged in layers according to their relative weight
and size. Hence there will be passages from till to stratified
clay, gravel, and sand, and intercalations of one in the other.
Many of the blocks of stone with which the surfaces of glaciers
are loaded, falling occasionally through fissures in the ice, get
fixed and frozen into the bottom of the moving mass, and are
pushed along under it. In this position, being subjected to
great pressure, they scoop out long rectilinear furrows or
grooves parallel to each other on the subjacent solid rock.
Smaller scratches and striaB are made on the polished surface
by crystals or projecting edges of the hardest minerals, just
as a diamond cuts glass.
In all countries the fundamental rock on which the boulder
formation reposes, if it consists of granite, gneiss, marble, or
other hard stone capable of permanently retaining any super
ficial markings which may have been imprinted upon it, is
smoothed or polished, and exhibits parallel stria3 and furrows
having a determinate direction. This prevailing direction,
both in Europe and North America, is evidently connected
with the course taken by the erratic blocks in the same dis-
232 SCANDINAVIA ONCE ENCRUSTED CHAP. xiu.
trict, and is very commonly from north to south, or if it be
twenty or thirty or more degrees to the east or west of north,
still always corresponds to the direction in which the large
angular and rounded stones have travelled. These stones
themselves also are often furrowed and scratched on more
than one side, like those already spoken of as occurring in
the glacial drift of Bedford (p. 165), and in that of Norfolk
(pp. 213 and 218).
When we contemplate the area which is now exposed to
the abrading action of ice, or which is the receptacle of mo
raine matter thrown down from melting glaciers or bergs, we
at once perceive that the submarine area is the most exten
sive of the two. The number of large icebergs which float
annually to great distances in the northern and southern
hemisphere is extremely great, and the quantity of stone
and mud which they carry about with them enormous. Some
floating islands of ice have been met with from two to five
miles in length, and from one hundred to two hundred and
twenty-five feet in height above water, the submerged por
tion, according to the weight of ice relatively to sea water,
being from six to eight times more considerable than the part
which is visible. Such masses, when they run aground on
the bottom of the sea, must exert a prodigious mechanical
power, and may polish and groove the subjacent rocks after
the manner of glaciers on the land. Hence there will often
be no small difficulty in distinguishing between the effects of
the submarine and supramarine agency of ice.
Scandinavia once covered with Ice, and a Centre of
Dispersion of Erratics.
In the north of Europe, along the borders of the Baltic,
where the boulder formation is continuous for hundreds of
miles east and west, it has been long known that the erratic
CHAP. xm. WITH ICE LIKE GREENLAND. 233
blocks, often of very large size, are of northern origin. Some
of them have come from Norway and Sweden, others from
Finland, and their present distribution implies that they were
carried southwards, for a part at least of their way, by floating
ice, at a time when much of the area over which they are
scattered was under water. But it appears from the obser
vations of Boetlingk, in 1840, and those of more recent in
quirers, that while many blocks have travelled to the south,
others have been carried northwards, or to the shores of the
Polar Sea, and others north-eastward, or to those of the White
Sea. In fact, they have wandered towards all points of the
compass, from the mountains of Scandinavia as a centre, and
the rectilinear furrows imprinted by them on the polished
surfaces of the mountains where the rocks are hard enough to
retain such markings, radiate in all directions, or point out
wards from the highest land, in a manner corresponding to
the course of the erratics above mentioned.
Before the glacial theory was adopted, the Swedish and
Norwegian geologists speculated on a great flood, or the
sudden rush of an enormous body of water charged with mud
and stones, descending from the central heights or watershed
into the adjoining lower lands. The erratic blocks were sup
posed in their downward passage to have smoothed and
striated the rock surfaces over which they were forced along.
It would be a waste of time, in the present state of science,
to controvert this hypothesis, as it is now admitted that even
if the rush of a diluvial current, invented for the occasion
and wholly without analogy in the known course of nature,
be granted, it would be inadequate to explain the uniformity,
parallelism, persistency, and rectilinearity of the so-called
glacial furrows. It is moreover ascertained that heavy
masses of rock, not fixed in ice, and moving as freely as they
do when simply swept along by a muddy current, do not
give rise to such scratches and furrows.
234 VIEWS OF M. KJERULE. CHAP. xm.
M. Kjerulf, of Christiania, in a paper lately communicated
to the Geological Society of Berlin,* has objected, and perhaps
with reason, to what he considers the undue extent to which
I have, in some of my writings, supposed the mountains of
northern Europe to have been submerged during the glacial
period. He remarks that the signs of glacial action on the
Scandinavian mountains ascend as high as 6,000 feet, whereas
fossil marine shells of the same period never reach elevations
exceeding 600 feet. The land he says may have been much
higher than it now is, but it has evidently not been much
lower since the commencement of the glacial period, or marine
shells would be traceable to more elevated points. In regard
to the absence of marine shells, I shall point out in the se
quel how small is the dependence we can place on this kind
of negative evidence, if we desire to test by it the extent to
which the land has been submerged. I cannot therefore con
sent to limit the probable depression and re-elevation of
Scandinavia to 600 feet. But that the larger part of the
glaciation of that country has been supramarine, I am willing
to concede. In support of this view M. Kjerulf observes that
the direction of the furrows and striae, produced by glacial
abrasion, neither conforms to a general movement of floating
ice from the Polar regions, nor to the shape of the existing
valleys, as it would do if it had been caused by independent
glaciers generated in the higher valleys after the land had
acquired its actual shape. Their general arrangement and
apparent irregularities are, he contends, much more in accor
dance with the hypothesis of there having been at one time
a universal covering of ice over the whole of Norway and
Sweden, like that now existing in Greenland, which, being
annually recruited by fresh falls of snow, was continually
pressing outwards and downwards to the coast and lower
regions, after crossing many of the lower ridges, and having
* Zeitschrift der G-eologischen G-esellschaft, Berlin, 1860.
CHAP. xni. CONTINENTAL ICE OF GREENLAND. 235
no relation to the minor depressions, which were all choked up
with ice and reduced to one uniform level.
Continental Ice of Greenland.
In support of this view, he appeals to the admirable de
scription of the continental ice of Greenland, lately published
by Dr. H. Eink, of Copenhagen,* who resided three or four
years in the Danish settlements, in Baffin's Bay, on the west
coast of Greenland, between latitudes 69 and 73 N. ' In that
country, the land,' says Dr. Eink, ' may be divided into two
regions, the " inland " and the " outskirts." The " inland,"
which is 800 miles from west to east, and of much greater
length from north to south, is a vast unknown continent,
buried under one continuous and colossal mass of permanent
ice, which is always moving seaward, but a small proportion
only of it in an easterly direction, since nearly the whole de
scends towards Baffin's Bay.' On reaching the heads of the
fiords which intersect the coast, a perpendicular wall of ice,
2,000 feet thick, is seen, beyond which the ice of the interior
rises by a succession of steps, twenty-five of which were
counted by Eink (but of which there are known to be still
more), all of them leading up to as many icy platforms, the
ridges and valleys being levelled up to one uniform plane,
and concealed by these tabular masses of ice.
Although all the ice is moving seaward, the greatest quan
tity is discharged at the heads of certain large friths, usually
about four miles wide, which, if the climate were milder,
would be the outlet of as many great rivers. Through these
the ice is now protruded in huge blocks, several miles wide,
and from 1,000 to 1,500 feet in height or thickness. When
these masses reach the friths, they do not melt or break up
into fragments, but continue their course in a solid form
* Journal of Royal Geographical Society, vol. xxiii. p. 145, 1853.
236 HINK ON ICE OF GREENLAND. CHAP, xiir,
under the salt water, grating along the rocky bottom, which
they must polish and score at depths of hundreds and even of
more than a thousand feet. At length, when there is water
enough to float them, huge portions, having broken off, fill
Baffin's Bay with icebergs of a size exceeding any which could
be produced by ordinary land glaciers. Stones, sand, and
mud are sometimes included in these bergs which float down
Baffin's Bay. At some points, where the ice of the interior of
Greenland reaches the coast, Dr. Eink saw mighty springs
of clayey water issuing from under the edge of the ice even
in winter, showing the grinding action of the glacial mass
mixed with sand, on the subjacent surface of the rocks.
The ' outskirts,' where the Danish colonies are stationed,
consist of numerous islands, of which Disco island is the*
largest, in lat. 70 N., and of many peninsulas, with fiords
from fifty to a hundred miles long, running into the land,
and through which the ice above alluded to passes on its
way to the bay. This area is 30,000 square miles in extent,
and contains in it some mountains 4,000 feet to 5,000 feet
high. The perpetual snow usually begins at the height of
2,000 feet, below which level the land is for the most part
free from snow between June and August, and supports a
vegetation of several hundred species of flowering plants,
which ripen their seeds before the winter. There are even
some places where phenogamous plants have been found at an
elevation of 4,500 feet ; a fact which, when we reflect on the
immediate vicinity of so large and lofty a region of conti
nental ice in the same latitude, well deserves the attention of
the geologist, who should also bear in mind, that while the
Danes are settled to the west in the 'outskirts,* there exists,
due east of the most southern portion of this ice-covered con
tinent, at the distance of about 1,200 miles, the home of the
Laplanders with their reindeer, bears, wolves, seals, walruses,
and cetacea. If, therefore, there are geological grounds for
CHAP. XIII. FORMER MILD CLIMATE OF GREENLAND. 237
suspecting that Scandinavia or Scotland or Wales were ever
in the same glacial condition as Greenland now is, we must
not imagine that the contemporaneous fauna and flora were
everywhere poor and stunted, or that they may not, especially
at the distance of a few hundred miles in a southward di
rection, have been very luxuriant.
Another series of observations made by Captain Graah,
during a survey of Greenland between 1823 and 1829, and
by Dr. Pingel in 1830-32, adds not a little to the geological
interest of the ( outskirts,' in their bearing on glacial pheno
mena of ancient date. Those Danish investigators, with one
of whom, Dr. Pingel, I conversed at Copenhagen in 1834,
ascertained that the whole coast from lat. 60 to about 70 north
has been subsiding for the last four centuries, so that some
ancient piles driven into the beach to support the boats of the
settlers have been gradually submerged, and wooden build
ings have had to be repeatedly shifted farther inland.*
In Norway and Sweden, instead of such a subsiding move
ment, the land is slowly rising ; but we have only to suppose
that formerly, when it was covered like Greenland with conti
nental ice, it sank at the rate of several feet in a century,
and we shall be able to explain why marine deposits are
found above the level of the sea, and why these generally
overlie polished and striated surfaces of rock.
We know that Greenland was not always covered with
snow and ice, for when we examine the tertiary strata of
Disco Island (of the upper miocene period) we discover there
a multitude of fossil plants, which demonstrate that, like
many other parts of the arctic regions, it formerly enjoyed a
mild and genial climate. Among the fossils brought from
that island, lat. 70 K, Professor Heer has recognised
Sequoia Langsdorfii, a coniferous species which flourished
throughout a great part of Europe in the miocene period,
* Principles of Geology, cli. xxx.
238 MIOCENE FLORA OF ICELAND. CHAP. xra.
and is very closely allied to the living Sequoia sempervirens
of California. The same plant has been found fossil by Sir
John Eichardson within the arctic circle, far to the west on
the Mackenzie Eiver, near the entrance of Bear Eiver, also by
some Danish naturalists in Iceland to the east. The Ice
landic surturbrand, or lignite, of this age has also yielded a
rich harvest of plants, more than thirty-one of them, accord
ing to Steenstrup and Heer, in a good state of preservation,
and no less than fifteen specifically identical with miocene
plants of Europe. Thirteen of the number are arborescent;
and amongst others is a tulip-tree (Liriodendron), with its fruit
and characteristic leaves, a plane (Platanus), a walnut, and a
vine, affording unmistakeable evidence of a climate in the
parallel of the arctic circle which precludes the supposition
of glaciers then existing in the neighbourhood, still less any
general crust of continental ice, like that of Greenland.*
As the older pliocene flora of the tertiary strata of Italy,
like the shells of the coralline crag, before adverted to,
p. 210, indicate a temperature milder than that now prevail
ing in Europe, though not so warm as that of the upper
miocene period, it is probable that the accumulation of snow
and glaciers on the mountains and valleys of Greenland did
not begin till after the commencement of the pliocene period,
and may not have reached its maximum until the close of
that period.
Norway and Sweden appear to have passed through all the
successive phases of glaciation which Greenland has experi
enced, and others which that country will one day undergo, if
the climate which it formerly enjoyed should ever be restored
to it. There must have been first a period of separate glaciers
in Scandinavia, then a Greenlandic state of continental ice, and
thirdly, when that diminished, a second period of enormous
separate glaciers filling many a valley now wooded with fir and
* Heer, Eeclierclies sur la Vegetation du Pays tertiaire, &c., 1861, p. 178.
CHAP. xm. ERRATICS OF RECENT PERIOD IN SWEDEN. 239
birch. Lastly, under the influence of the Grulf Stream, and
various changes in the height and extent of land in the arctic
circle, a melting of nearly all the permanent ice between lati
tudes 60 and 70 north, corresponding to the parallels of the
continental ice of Greenland, has occurred, so that we have now
to go farther north than lat. 70 before we encounter any
glacier coming down to the sea coast. Among other signs of
the last retreat of the extinct glaciers, Kjerulf and other
authors describe large transverse moraines left in many of the
Norwegian and Swedish glens.
Chronological Relations of the Human and Glacial
Periods in Sweden.
We may now consider whether any, and what part, of these
changes in Scandinavia may have been witnessed by man.
In Sweden, in the immediate neighbourhood of Upsala, I
observed, in 1834, a ridge of stratified sand and gravel, in
the midst of which occurs a layer of marl, evidently formed
originally at the bottom of the Baltic, by the slow growth of
the mussel, cockle, and other marine shells of living species
intermixed with some proper to fresh water. The marine
shells are all of dwarfish size, like those now inhabiting the
brackish waters of the Baltic ; and the marl, in which myriads
of them are imbedded, is now raised more than a hundred
feet above the level of the Grulf of Bothnia. Upon the top
of this ridge (one of those called osars in Sweden) repose
several huge erratics, consisting of gneiss for the most part
unrounded, from nine to sixteen feet in diameter, and which
must have been brought into their present position since the
time when the neighbouring gulf was already characterised
by its peculiar fauna. Here, therefore, we have proof that
the transport of erratics continued to take place, not merely
when the sea was inhabited by the existing testacea, but
240 UPSALA ERRATICS. CHAP. xm.
when the north of Europe had already assumed that remark
able feature of its physical geography, which separates the
Baltic from the North Sea, and causes the Grulf of Bothnia
to have only one-fourth of the saltness belonging to the
ocean.
I cannot doubt that these large erratics of Upsala were
brought into their present position during the recent period,
not only because of their moderate elevation above the sea-
level in a country where the land is now rising every century,
but because I observed signs of a great oscillation of level
which had taken place at Sodertelje, south of Stockholm
(about forty-five miles distant from Upsala), after the country
had been inhabited by man. I described, in the 'Philosophical
Transactions ' for 1835, the section there laid open in digging
a level in 1819, which showed that a subsidence followed by a
re-elevation of land, each movement amounting to more than
sixty feet, had occurred since the time when a rude hut had
been built on the ancient shore. The wooden frame of the
hut, with a ring of hearthstones on the floor, and much charcoal,
were found, and over them marine strata, more than sixty
feet thick, containing the dwarf variety of Mytilus edulis, and
other brackish -water shells of the Bothnian Gulf. Some vessels
put together with wooden pegs, of anterior date to the use of
metals, were also embedded in parts of the same marine for
mation, which has since been raised, so that the upper beds
are more than sixty feet above the sea-level, the hut being thus
restored to about its original position relatively to the sea.
We have seen in the account of the Danish ' shell-mounds,'
or 4 refuse-heaps,' of the recent period (p. 13), that even at
the comparatively late period of their origin the waters of
the Baltic had been rendered more salt than they are now.
The Upsala erratics may belong to nearly the same era as those
* refuse-heaps.' But were we to go back to a long antecedent
epoch, or to that of the Belgian and British caves with their
CHAP. XIIT. GLACIAL PERIOD IN SCOTLAND. 241
extinct animals, and the signs they afford of a state of phy
sical geography departing widely from the present, or to
the era of the implement-bearing alluvium of St. Acheul, we
might expect to find Scandinavia overwhelmed with glaciers,
and the country uninhabitable by man. At a much remoter
period the same country was in the state in which Greenland
now is, overspread with one uninterrupted coating of conti
nental ice, which has left its peculiar markings on the highest
mountains. This period, probably anterior to the earliest
traces yet brought to light of the human race, may have
coincided with the submergence of England, and the accumu
lation of the boulder-clay of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Bedford
shire, before mentioned. It has already been stated that the
syenite and some other rocks of the Norfolk till (p. 218)
seem to have come from Scandinavia, and there is no era
when icebergs are so likely to have floated them so far south
as when the whole of Sweden and Norway were enveloped
in a massive crust of ice ; a state of things the existence of
which is deduced from the direction of the glacial furrows,
and their frequent unconformity to the shape of the minor
valleys.
Glacial Period in Scotland.
Mr. Eobert Chambers, after visiting Norway and Sweden,
and comparing the signs of glacial action observed there
with similar appearances in the Grampians, came to the con
clusion that the Highlands both of Scandinavia and Scotland
had once been ; moulded in ice,' and that the outward and
downward movement and pressure of the frozen mass had
not only smoothed, polished, and scratched the rocks, but
had, in the course of ages, deepened and widened the valleys,
and produced much of that denudation which has commonly
been ascribed exclusively to aqueous action. The glaciation
R
242 GLACIAL PEEIOD IN SCOTLAND. CHAP. xm.
of the Scotch mountains was traced by him to the height of
at least three thousand feet.*
Professor Agassiz, after his tour in Scotland in 1840,
announced the opinion that erratic blocks had been dispersed
from the Scottish mountains as from an independent centre,
and that the capping of ice had been of extraordinary
thickness. Mr. T. F. Jamieson, of Ellon, in Aberdeenshire,
has recently brought forward an additional body of facts in
support of this theory. According to him the Grampians
were at the period of extreme cold enveloped 'in one great
winding sheet of snow and ice,' which reached everywhere
to the coast-line, the land being then more elevated than it
is now. He describes the glacial furrows sculptured on the
solid rocks as pointing in Aberdeenshire to the south-east,
those of the valley of the Forth at Edinburgh, from west to
east, and higher up the same valley at Stirling, from north
west to south-east, as they should do if the ice had followed
the lines of what is now the principal drainage. The obser
vations of Sir James Hall, Mr. Maclaren, Mr. Chambers, and
Dr. Fleming, are cited by him in confirmation of this ar
rangement of the glacial markings, while in Sutherland and
Kossshire he shows that the glacial furrows along the north
coast point northwards, and in Argyleshire westwards, always
in accordance with the direction of the principal glens and
fiords.
Another argument is also adduced by him in proof of the
ice having exerted its mechanical force in a direction from
the higher and more inland country to the lower region and
sea coast. Isolated hills and minor prominences of rock are
often polished and striated on the land side, while they remain
rough and jagged on the side fronting the sea. This may be
seen both on the east and west coast, Mention is also made
* Ancient Sea Margins, Edinburgh, New Philosophical Journal, April
1848. Glacial Phenomena, Edinburgh 1853, and January 1855.
CHAP. xm. SUBMERGENCE OF SCOTLAND. 243
of blocks of granite which have travelled from south to north
in Aberdeenshire, of which there would have been no ex
amples had the erratics been all brought by floating ice from
the arctic regions when Scotland was submerged. It is also
urged against the doctrine of attributing the general glacia-
tion to submergence, that the glacial grooves, instead of ra
diating as they do from a centre, would, if they had been due
to ice coming from the north, have been parallel to the
coast-line, to which they are now often almost at right
angles. The argument, moreover, which formerly had most
weight in favour of floating ice, namely, that it explained why
so many of the stones did not conform to the contour and
direction of the minor hills and valleys, is now brought
forward, and with no small effect, in favour of the doctrine
of continental ice on the Greenlandic scale, which, after
levelling up the lesser inequalities, would occasionally flow in
mighty ice-currents, in directions often at a high angle to
the smaller ridges and glens.
The application to Scandinavia and Scotland of this theory
makes it necessary to reconsider the validity of the proofs
formerly relied on as establishing the submergence of a great
part of Scotland beneath the sea, at some period subsequent
to the commencement of the glacial period. In all cases
where marine shells overlie till, or rest on polished and
striated surfaces of rock, the evidence of the land having been
under water, and having been since upheaved, remains un
shaken ; but this proof alone rarely extends to heights ex
ceeding five hundred feet. In the basin of the Clyde we have
already seen that recent strata occur twenty-five feet above
the sea-level, with existing species of marine testacea, and with
buried canoes, and other works of art. At the higher level
of forty feet occurs the well-known raised beach of the western
coast, which, according to Mr. Jamieson, contains, near
Fort William and on Loch Fyne and elsewhere, an assem-
E 2
244 SUBAQUEOUS DRIFT IN PERTHSHIRE. CHAP. XIII.
blage of shells implying a colder climate than that of the
twenty-five foot terrace, or that of the present sea ; just as, in
the Valley' of the Soinme, the higher level gravels are sup
posed to belong to a colder period than the lower ones, and
still more decidedly than that of the present era (see p. 142).
At still greater elevations, older beds containing a still more
arctic group of shells have been observed at Airdrie, fourteen
miles south-east of Glasgow, 524 feet above the level of the
sea. They were embedded in stratified clays, with the un-
stratified boulder till both above and below them, and in the
overlying unstratified drift were some boulders of granite
which must have come from distances of sixty miles at the
least.* The presence of Tellina calcarea, and several other
northern shells, implies a climate colder than that of the present
Scottish seas. In the north of Scotland, marine shells have
been found in deposits of the same age in Caithness and in
Aberdeenshire at heights of two hundred and fifty feet, and
on the shores of the Moray Frith, as at Gramrie in Banff, at
an elevation of three hundred and fifty feet ; and the stratified
sands and beds of pebbles which belong to the same formation
ascend still higher to heights of five hundred feet at least. f
At much greater heights, stratified masses of drift occur in
which hitherto no organic remains, whether of marine or
freshwater animals., have ever been found. It is still an un
decided question whether the origin of all such deposits in
the G-rampians can be explained without the intervention of
the sea. One of the most conspicuous examples has been
described by Mr. Jamieson as resting on the flank of a hill
called Meal Uaine, in Perthshire, on the east side of the valley
of the Tummel, just below Killiecrankie. It consists of per-
* Smith of Jordanhill, Quarterly ceedings of the Geological Society,
Geological Journal, vol. vi. p. 387, vol. ii. p. 545 ; and T. F. Jamieson,
1850. Geological Quarterly Journal, vol.
f See papers by Prestwich, Pro- xvi.
CH.4P. XIII. SUBAQUEOUS DRIFT IN PERTHSHIRE. 2-15
fectly horizontal strata, the lowest portion of them 300 feet
above the river and 600 feet above the sea. From this
elevation to an altitude of nearly 1,200 feet the same series
of strata is traceable, continuously, up the slope of the moun
tain, and some patches are seen here and there even as high as
1,550 feet above the sea. They are made up in great part of
finely laminated silt, alternating with coarser materials, through
which stones from four to five feet in length are scattered.
These large boulders, and some smaller ones, are polished on
one or more sides, and marked with glacial striae. The sub
jacent rocks, also, of gneiss, mica slate, and quartz, are every
where grooved and polished as if by the passage of a glacier.*
At one spot a vertical thickness of 130 feet of this series
of strata is exposed to view by a mountain torrent, and in all
more than 2,000 layers of clay, sand, and gravel were counted,
the whole evidently accumulated under water. Some beds
consist of an impalpable mud-like putty, apparently derived
from the grinding down of felspar, and resembling the mud
produced by the grinding action of modern glaciers.
Mr. Jamieson, when he first gave an account of this drift,
inferred, in spite of the absence of marine shells, that it
implied the submergence of Scotland beneath the ocean after
the commencement of the glacial period, or after the era of
continental ice indicated by the subjacent floor of polished
and grooved rock. This conclusion would require a submer
gence of the land as far up as 1,550 feet above the present
sea-level, after which a great re-upheaval must have occurred.
But the same author, having lately revisited the valley of the
Tummel, suggests another possible, and I think probable,
explanation of the same phenomena. The stratified drift in
question is situated in a deep depression between two but
tresses of rock, and if an enormous glacier be supposed to
* Jamieson, Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. xvi. p. 360.
246 RE-ELEVATION OF SCOTLAND. CHAP. xin.
have once filled the valley of the Tummel to the height of the
stratified drift, it may have dammed up the mouth of a
mountain torrent by a transverse barrier, giving rise to a
deep pond, in which beds of clay and sand brought down by
the waters of the torrent were deposited. Charpentier in his
work on the Swiss glaciers has described many such recep
tacles of stratified matter now in progress, and due to such
blockages, and he has pointed out the remnants of ancient
and similar formations left by extinct glaciers of an earlier
epoch. He specially notices that angular stones of various
dimensions, often polished and striated, which rest on the
glacier and are let fall when the torrent undermines the
side of the moving ice, descend into the small lake and be
come interstratified with the gravel and fine sediment brought
down by the torrent into the same.*
The evidence of the former sojourn of the sea upon the
land after the commencement of the glacial period was for
merly inferred from the height to which erratic blocks derived
from distant regions could be traced, besides the want of
conformity in the glacial furrows to the present contours of
many of the valleys. Some of these phenomena may now,
as we have seen, be accounted for by assuming that there was
once a crust of ice resembling that now covering Greenland.
The Grampians in Forfarshire and in Perthshire are from
3,000 to 4,000 feet high. To the southward lies the broad
and deep valley of Strathmore, and to the south of this
again rise the Sidlaw Hills to the height of 1,500 feet and
upwards. On the highest summits of this chain, formed of
sandstone and shale, and at various elevations, I have
observed huge angular fragments of mica-schist, some three
and others fifteen feet in diameter, which have been conveyed
for a distance of at least fifteen miles from the nearest
Grampian rocks from which they could have been detached,
* Charpentier, Essai sur les Glaciers, p. 63, 1841.
CHAP. XIII. RE-ELEVATION OF SCOTLAND. 247
Others have been left strewed over the bottom of the large
intervening vale of Strathmore.*
It may be argued that the transportation of such blocks
may have been due not to floating ice, but to a period when
Strathmore was filled up with land ice, a current of which ex
tended from the Perthshire Highlands to the summit of the
Sidlaw Hills, and the total absence of marine or freshwater
shells from all deposits, stratified or unstratified, which have
any connection with these erratics in Forfarshire and Perth
shire may be thought to favour such a theory.
But the same mode of transport can scarcely be imagined
for those fragments of mica-schist, one of them weighing from
eight to ten tons, which were observed much farther south
by Mr. Maclaren on the Pentland Hills, near Edinburgh, at
the height of 1,100 feet above the sea, the nearest mountain
composed of this formation being fifty miles distant.! On
the same hills, also, at all elevations, stratified gravels occur
which, although devoid of shells, it seems hardly possible to
refer to any but a marine origin.f
Although I am willing, therefore, to concede that the
glaciation of the Scotch mountains, at elevations exceeding
2,000 feet, may be explained by land ice, it seems difficult
not to embrace the conclusion that a subsidence took place
not merely of 500 or 600 feet, as demonstrated by the
marine shells, but to a much greater amount, as shown by the
present position of erratics and some patches of stratified drift.
The absence of marine shells at greater heights than 525 feet
above the sea, will be treated of in a future chapter. It may
in part, perhaps, be ascribed to the action of glaciers, which
swept out marine strata from all the higher valleys, after
the re-emergence of the land.
* Proceedings of the Geological f Maclaren, Geology of Fife, &c.,
Society, vol. iii. p. 344. p. 220.
248 LATEST GLACIAL CHANGES IN SCOTLAND. CHAP. xui.
Latest Changes produced by Glaciers in Scotland.
We may next consider the state of Scotland after its
emergence from the glacial sea, when we cannot fail to
be approaching the time when man coexisted with the
mammoth and other mammalia now extinct. In a paper
which I published in 1840, on the ancient glaciers of Forfar-
shire, I endeavoured to show that some of these existed after
the mountains and glens had acquired precisely their present
shape,* and had left moraines even in the minor valleys, just
where they would now leave them were the snow and ice
again to gain ground. I described also one remarkable
transverse mound, evidently the terminal moraine of a
retreating glacier, which crosses the valley of the South Esk,
a few miles above the point where it issues from the
Grampians, and about six miles below the town of Clova. It
is situated at a place called Grlenairn (perhaps 700 feet
above the level of the sea), where the valley is half a mile
broad and is bounded by steep and lofty mountains. The
valley immediately above this transverse barrier expands
into a wide alluvial plain, which has evidently once been a
lake. The barrier itself, nearly 200 feet high, consists in its
lower part of till with boulders, 80 feet thick, precisely resem
bling the moraine of a Swiss glacier, above which there is a
mass of stratified sand 100 feet thick, which has the appear
ance of consisting of the materials of the moraine re-arranged
in a stratified form, possibly by the waters of a glacier lake.
The structure of the entire barrier has been laid open by the
Esk, which has cut through it a deep passage about 300 yards
wide.
I have also given an account of another striking feature in
the physical geography of Perthshire and Forfarshire, which I
* Proceedings of the Geological Society, vol. iii. p. 337.
CHAP. XIII. FORFARSHIRE ZONE OF BOULDER CLAY. 249
consider to belong to the same period; namely, a continuous
zone of boulder clay, forming ridges and mounds from fifty
to seventy feet high (the upper part of the mounds usually
stratified), enclosing numerous lakes, some of them
several miles long, and many ponds and swamps filled
with shell-marl and peat. This band of till, with Grampian
boulders and associated river-gravel, may be traced con
tinuously for a distance of thirty-four miles, with a width of
three and a half miles, from near Dunkeld, by Coupar, to the
south of Blairgowrie, then through the lowest part of Strath-
more, and afterwards in a straight line through the greatest
depression in the Sidlaw Hills, from Forfar to Lunan Bay.
Although no great river now takes its course through this
line df ancient lakes, moraines, and river gravel, yet it evi
dently marks an ancient line by which, first, a great glacier
descended from the mountains to the sea, and by which,
secondly, at a later period, the principal water drainage of this
country was effected. The subsequent modification in geo
graphy is comparable in amount to that which has taken
place since the higher level gravels of the Valley of the
Somme were formed, or since the Belgian caves were filled
with mud and bone-breccia.
Mr. Jamieson has remarked, in reference to this and some
other extinct river-channels of corresponding date, that we
have the means of ascertaining the direction in which the
waters flowed by observing the arrangement of the oval and
flattish pebbles in their deserted channels ; for in the bed of a
fast-flowing river such pebbles are seen to dip towards the
current, as represented in fig. 35, such being the position of
greatest resistance to the stream.* If this be admitted, it
follows that the higher or mountainous country bore the
same relation to the lower lands, at the time when a great
river passed through this chain of lakes, as it does at present.
* Jamieson, Quarterly Geological Journal, vol. xvi. p. 349.
250 ORGANIC REMAINS IN SCOTCH BOULDER CLAY. CHAP. xin.
Fig. 35
We also seem to have a test of the comparatively modern
origin of the mounds of till which surround the above men
tioned chain of lakes (of which that of Forfar is one), in
the species of organic remains contained in the shell-marl
deposited at their bottom. All the mammalia as well as
shells are of recent species. Unfortunately, we have no infor
mation as to the fauna which inhabited the country at the time
when the till itself was formed. There seem to be only three
or four instances as yet known in all Scotland of mammalia
having been discovered in boulder clay.
Mr. E. Bald has recorded the circumstances under which
a single elephant's tusk was found in the unstratified drift of
the Valley of the Forth, with the minuteness which such a
discovery from its rarity well deserved. He distinguishes
the boulder clay, under the name of ' the old alluvial cover,'
from that more modern alluvium, in which the whales of
Airthrie, described at p. 53, were found. This cover he
says is sometimes one hundred and sixty feet thick. Having
never observed any organic remains in it, he watched with
curiosity and care the digging of the Union Canal between
Edinburgh and Falkirk, which passed for no less than twenty-
eight miles almost continuously through it. Mr. Baird the
engineer, who superintended the works, assisted in the inquiry,
and at one place only in this long section did they meet with
a fossil, namely, at Cliftonhall, in the valley of the Almond.
It lay at a depth of between fifteen and twenty feet from the
surface, in very stiff clay, and consisted of an elephant's
tusk, thirty-nine inches long and thirteen in circumference, in
so fresh a state that an ivory turner purchased it and turned
part of it into chessmen before it was rescued from destruction.
CHAP. XIIT. ORGANIC REMAINS IN SCOTCH BOULDER CLAY. 251
The remainder is still preserved in the museum at Edinburgh,
but by exposure to the air it has shrunk considerably.* In
1817, two other tusks and some bones of the elephant, as we
learn from the same authority (Mr. Bald), were met with,
three and a half feet long and thirteen inches in circumference,
lying in an horizontal position, seventeen feet deep in clay,
with marine shells, at Kilmaurs, in Ayrshire. The species of
shells are not given. f
In another excavation through the Scotch boulder clay, made
in digging the Clyde and Forth Junction Railway, the antlers
of a reindeer were found at Croftamie, in Dumbartonshire,
in the basin of the river Endrick, which flows into Loch
Lomond. They had cut through twelve feet of till with
angular and rounded stones, some of large size, and then
through six feet of underlying clay, when they came upon
the deer's horns, eighteen feet from the surface, and within
a foot of the sandstone on which the till rested. At the
distance of a few yards, and in the same position, but a foot
or two deeper, were observed marine shells, Cyprina is-
landica, Astarte elliptica, A. compressa, Fusus antiquus,
Littorina littorea, and a Balanus. The height above the
level of the sea was between one hundred and one hundred
and three feet. The reindeer's horn was seen by Professor
Owen, who considered it to be that of a young female of the
large variety, called by the Hudson's Bay trappers the
carabou.
The remains of elephants, now in the museums of Glasgow
and Edinburgh, purporting to come from the superficial
deposits of Scotland have been referred to Mephas pri-
migenius. In cases where tusks alone have been found
unaccompanied by molar teeth, such specific determinations
may be uncertain ; but if any one specimen be correctly
* Memoirs of the Wernerian Society, Edinburgh, vol. iv. p. 58.
f Ibid., vol. iv. p. 63.
252 PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY. CHAP. xm.
named, the occurrence of the mammoth and reindeer in the
Scotch boulder-clay, as both these quadrupeds are known to
have been contemporary with man, favours the idea which I
have already expressed, that the close of the glacial period in
the Grampians may have coincided in time with the existence
of man in those parts of Europe where the climate was less
severe, as, for example, in the basins of the Thames, Somme,
and Seine, in which the bones of many extinct mammalia
are associated with flint implements of the antique type.
Parallel Roads of Glen Roy in Scotland.
Perhaps no portion of the superficial drift of Scotland can
lay claim to so modern an origin on the score of the fresh
ness of its aspect, as that which forms what are called the
Parallel Roads of Grlen Roy. If they do not belong to the
recent epoch, they are at least posterior in date to the pre
sent outline of mountain and glen, and to the time when
every one of the smaller burns ran in their present channels,
though some of them have since been slightly deepened.
The perfect horizontally, moreover, of the roads, one of which
is continuous for about twenty miles from east to west, and
twelve miles from north to south, shows that since the era
of their formation no change has taken place in the relative
levels of different parts of the district.
Grlen Roy is situated in the Western Highlands, about ten
miles north of Fort William, near the western end of the great
glen of Scotland, or Caledonian Canal, and near the foot of
the highest of the Grampians, Ben Nevis. (See map, p. 254.)
Throughout nearly its whole length, a distance of more than
ten miles, three parallel roads or shelves are traced along the
steep sides of the mountains, as represented in the annexed
view, Plate II., by the late Sir T. Lander Dick, each maintain
ing a perfect horizontally, and continuing at exactly the
V,
I !
fc
ilt
o ?,
CHAP. XIII. PARALLEL EOADS OF GLEN ROT. 253
same level on the opposite sides of the glen. Seen at a
distance, they appear like ledges, or roads, cut artificially out
of the sides of the hills ; but when we are upon them, we can
scarcely recognise their existence, so uneven is their surface,
and so covered with boulders. They are from ten to sixty
feet broad, and merely differ from the side of the mountain
by being somewhat less steep.
On closer inspection, we find that these terraces are stra
tified in the ordinary manner of alluvial or littoral deposits,
as may be seen at those points where ravines have been
excavated by torrents. The parallel shelves, therefore, have
not been caused by denudation, but by the deposition of
detritus, precisely similar to that which is dispersed in
smaller quantities over the declivities of the hills above.
These hills consist of clay-slate, mica schist, and granite,
which rocks have been worn away and laid bare at a few
points immediately above the parallel roads. The lowest
of these roads is about 850 feet above the level of the
sea, the next about 212 feet higher, and the third 82 feet
above the second. There is a fourth shelf, which occurs
only in a contiguous valley called Grlen Grluoy, which is
twelve feet above the highest of all the Glen Eoy roads, and
consequently about 1,156 feet above the level of the sea.* One
only, the lowest of the three roads of Grlen Eoy, is continued
throughout Grlen Spean, a large valley with which Grlen Eoy
unites. (See Plate II. and map, fig. 36.) As the shelves, having
no slope towards the sea like ordinary river terraces, are always
at the same absolute height, they become continually more
elevated above the river in proportion as we descend each
valley ; and they at length terminate very abruptly, without
any obvious cause, or any change either in the shape of the
ground or in the composition or hardness of the rocks.
* Another detached shelf also occurs at Kilfinnan. (See Map, p. 254.)
254
MAP OF PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY. CHAP. xm.
CHAP xin. PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY. 255
I should exceed the limits of this work, were I to attempt
to give a full description of all the geographical circumstances
attending these singular terraces, or to discuss the ingenious
theories which have been severally proposed to account for
them by Dr. Macculloch, Sir T. Lauder, and Messrs. Darwin,
Agassiz, Milne, and Chambers. There is one point, how
ever, on which all are agreed, namely, that these shelves
are ancient beaches, or littoral formations, accumulated rotfad
the edges of one or more sheets of water which once stood for
a long time successively at the level of the several shelves.
It is well known, that wherever a lake or marine fiord
exists surrounded by steep mountains subject to disintegra
tion by frost or the action of torrents, some loose matter is
washed down annually, especially during the melting of snow,
and a check is given to the descent of this detritus at the
point where it reaches the waters of the lake. The waves then
spread out the materials along the shore, and throw some of
them upon the beach; their dispersing power being aided
by the ice, which often adheres to pebbles during the winter
months, and gives buoyancy to them.
The annexed diagram illustrates
the manner in which Dr. Maccul
loch and Mr. Darwin suppose 6 the
roads' to constitute mere excres
cences of the superficial alluvial
coating which rests upon the hill
side, and consists chiefly of clay
and sharp unrounded stones.
Among Other proofs that the A B. Supposed original surface
parallel roads have really been CD . Bo^tr shelves in the
formed along the margin of a sheet outer alluvial covering
of the hill.
of water, it may be mentioned, that
wherever an isolated hill rises in the middle of the glen above
the level of any particular shelf, as in Mealderry, Plate II., a
256 THEORY OF AGASSIZ. CHAP. xm.
corresponding shelf is seen at the same level passing round
the hill, as would have happened if it had once formed an
island in a lake or fiord. Another very remarkable pecu
liarity in these terraces is this ; each of them comes in some
portion of its course to a col, or parting ridge between the
heads of glens, the explanation of which will be considered
in the sequel.
'Those writers who first advocated the doctrine that the
roads were the ancient beaches of freshwater lakes, were
unable to offer any probable hypothesis respecting the for
mation and subsequent removal of barriers of sufficient height
and solidity to dam up the water. To introduce any violent
convulsion for their removal was inconsistent with the unin
terrupted horizontality of the roads, and with the undisturbed
aspect of those parts of the glens where the shelves come
suddenly to an end.
Mr. Agassiz and Dr. Buckland, desirous, like the defenders
of the lake theory, to account for the limitation of the shelves
to certain glens, and their absence in contiguous glens, where
the rocks are of the same composition, and the slope and in
clination of the ground very similar, first started the theory
that these valleys were once blocked up by enormous glaciers
descending from Ben Nevis, giving rise to what are called, in
Switzerland and in the Tyrol, glacier-lakes. In corroboration
of this view, they contended that the alluvium of Grlen Roy,
as well as of other parts of Scotland, agrees in character with
the moraines of glaciers seen in the Alpine valleys of Switzer
land. It will readily be conceded that this hypothesis was
preferable to any previous lacustrine theory, by accounting
more easily for the temporary existence and entire disappear
ance of lofty transverse barriers, although the height required
for the supposed dams of ice appeared very enormous.
Before the idea of glacier-lakes had been suggested by
Agassiz, Mr. Darwin examined Glen Roy, and came to the
CHAP. xiii. DAKWIN ON PARALLEL ROADS. 257
opinion that the shelves were formed when the glens were
still arms of the sea, and, consequently, that there never were
any seaward barriers. According to him, the land emerged
during a slow and uniform upward movement, like that now
experienced throughout a large part of Sweden and Finland ;
but there were certain pauses in the upheaving process, at
which times the waters of the sea remained stationary for so
many centuries as to allow of the accumulation of an extra
ordinary quantity of detrital matter, and the excavation, at
many points immediately above the sea-level, of deep notches
and bare cliffs in the hard and solid rock.
This theory I adopted in 1841 (' Elements,' 2nd ed.), as ap
pearing to me less objectionable than any other then proposed.
The phenomena most difficult to reconcile with it are, first, the
abrupt cessation of the roads at certain points in the different
glens ; secondly, their unequal number in different valleys
connecting with each other, there being three, for example, in
Glen Eoy, and only one in Grlen Spean ; thirdly, the precise
horizontality of level maintained by the same shelf over a space
many leagues in length, requiring us to assume, that during
a rise of 1,156 feet no one portion of the land was raised even
a few yards above another ; fourthly, the coincidence of level
already alluded to of each shelf with a col, or the point form
ing the head of two glens, from which the rain-waters flow
in opposite directions. This last-mentioned feature in the
physical geography of Lochaber Mr. Darwin endeavoured to
explain in the following manner. He called these cols
( land-straits,' and regarding them as having been anciently
sounds or channels between islands, he pointed out that
there is a tendency in such sounds to be silted up, and
always the more so in proportion to their narrowness. In a
chart of the Falkland Islands, by Capt. Sullivan, E.N., it
appears that there are several examples there of straits where
the soundings diminish regularly towards the narrowest part.
258 DARWIN ON PARALLEL ROADS. CHAP. xm.
One is so nearly dry that it can be walked over at low water,
and another, no longer covered by the sea, is supposed to
have recently dried up in consequence of a small alteration
in the relative level of sea and land. ( Similar straits,'
observes Mr. Chambers, 'hovering, in character, between
sea and land, and which may be called fords, are met with
in the Hebrides. Such, for example, is the passage dividing
the islands of Lewis and Harris, and that between North
Uist and Benbecula, both of which would undoubtedly appear
as cols, coinciding with a terrace or raised beach, all round
the islands if the sea were to subside.'*
The first of the difficulties above alluded to, namely, the
non-extension of the shelves over certain parts of the glens,
might be explained, said Mr. Darwin, by supposing in
certain places a quick growth of green turf on a good soil,
which prevented the rain from washing away any loose
materials lying on the surface. But wherever the soil was
barren, and where green sward took long to form, there may
have been time for the removal of the gravel. In one case
an intermediate shelf appears for a short distance (three
quarters of a mile) on the face of the mountain called Tomb-
hran, between the two upper shelves, and is seen nowhere
else. It occurs where there was the longest space of open
water, and where the waves may have acquired a more than
ordinary power to heap up detritus.
The unequal number of the shelves in valleys communi
cating with each other, and in which the boundary rocks are
similar in composition, and the general absence of any shelves
at corresponding altitudes in glens on the opposite watershed,
like that of the Spey, and in valleys where the waters flow
eastward, are difficulties attending the marine theory which
have never yet been got over. Mr. T. F. Jamieson, before
* Ancient Sea Margins, p. 114, by R. Chambers.
CHAP. xin. THEORY OF AGASSIZ CONFIRMED. 259
cited, has, during a late visit to Lochaber, in 1861, observed
many facts highly confirmatory of the hypothesis of glacier-
lakes which, as I have already stated, was originally advanced
by Mr. Agassiz. In the first place, he found much superficial
scoring and polishing of rocks, and accumulation of boulders
at those points where signs of glacial action ought to appear,
if ice had once dammed up the waters of the glens in which
the 'roads' occur. Ben Nevis may have sent down its
glaciers from the south, and Glen Arkeg from the north, for
the mountains at the head of the last-mentioned glen are
3,000 feet high, and may, together with other tributary glens,
have helped to choke up the great Caledonian valley with ice,
so as to block up for a time the mouths of the Spean, Eoy,
and Grluoy. The temporary conversion of these glens into
glacier-lakes is the more conceivable, because the hills at
their upper ends not being lofty nor of great extent, they
may not have been filled with ice at a time when great
glaciers were generated in other adjoining and much higher
regions.
2ndly. The shelves, says Mr. Jamieson, are more precisely
defined and unbroken than any of the raised beaches or ac
knowledged ancient coast-lines visible on the west of Scotland,
as in Argyleshire, for example.
Srdly. At the level of the lower shelf in Grlen Koy, at points
where torrents now cut channels through the shelf as they
descend the hill-side, there are small delta-like extensions of
the shelf, perfectly preserved, as if the materials, whether fine
or coarse, had originally settled there in a placid lake, and
had not been acted upon by tidal currents, mingling them
with the sediment of other streams. These deltas are too
entire to allow us to suppose that they have at any time since
their origin been exposed to the waves of the sea.
4thly. The alluvium on the e cols' or watersheds, before
alluded to, is such as would have been formed if the waters
s 2
260 PARALLEL ROADS OF GLEN ROY CHAP, xn
of the rivers had been made to flow east, or out of the upper
ends of the supposed glacier-lakes, instead of escaping at the
lower ends, in a westerly direction, where the great blockages
of ice are assumed to have occurred.
In addition to these arguments of Mr. Jamieson, I may
mention that in Switzerland, at present, no testacea live in
the cold waters of glacier-lakes ; so that the entire absence of
fossil shells, whether marine or freshwater, in the stratified
materials of each shelf, would be accounted for, if the
theory above mentioned be embraced.
When I examined 'the parallel roads' in 1825, in com
pany with Dr. Buckland, neither this glacier theory nor Mr.
Darwin's suggestion of ancient sea-margins had been pro
posed, and I have never since revisited Lochaber. But I
retain in my memory a vivid recollection of the scenery and
physical features of the district, and I now consider the
glacier-lake theory as affording by far the most satisfactory
solution of this difficult problem. The objection to it, which
until lately appeared to be the most formidable, and which
led Mr. Kobert Chambers in his ' Sea Margins ' to reject it
entirely, was the difficulty of conceiving how the waters could
be made to stand so high in Grlen Roy, as to allow the upper
most shelf to be formed. Grant a barrier of ice in the lower
part of the glen, of sufficient altitude to stop the waters from
flowing westward, still, what prevented them from escaping
over the c col ' at the head of Grlen Glaster ? This ' col ' coin
cides exactly in level, as Mr. Milne Home first ascertained,
with the second or middle shelf of Grlen Roy. The difficulty
here stated appears now to be removed by supposing that the
higher lines or roads were formed before the lower ones, and
when the quantity of ice was most in excess. We must ima
gine that at the time when the uppermost shelf of Grlen Roy
was forming in a shallow lake, the lower part of that glen
was filled up with ice, and, according to Mr. Jamieson, a
CHAP. xin. DUE TO GLACIER-LAKES. 261
glacier from Loch Treig then protruded itself across Glen
Spean, and rested on the flank of the hill on the opposite side
in such a manner as effectually to prevent any water from
escaping over the Glen Glaster ' col.' The proofs of such a
glacier having actually existed at the point in question
consist, he says, in numerous cross striae observable in the
bottom of Glen Spean, and in the presence of moraine matter
in considerable abundance on the flanks of the hill extending
to heights above the Glen Glaster ' col.' When the ice
shrank into less dimensions the second shelf would be formed,
having its level determined by the col last mentioned, Glen
Spean in the meantime being filled with a glacier. Finally,
the ice blockage common to Glens Eoy, Spean, and Laggan,
which consisted probably of a glacier from Ben Nevis, gave
rise to the lowest and most extensive lake, the waters of
which escaped over the pass of Muckul or the ( col' at the head
of Loch Laggan, which, as Mr. Jamieson has now ascertained,
agrees precisely in level with the lowest of all the shelves,
and where there are unequivocal signs of a river having
flowed out for a considerable period.
Dr. Hooker has described some parallel terraces, very
analogous in their aspect to those of Glen Roy, as existing in
the higher valleys of the Himalaya, of which his pencil has
given us several graphic illustrations. He believes these
Indian shelves to have originated on the borders of glacier-
lakes, the barriers of which were usually formed by the ice
and moraines of lateral or tributary glaciers, which descended
into and crossed the main valley, as we have supposed in the
case of Glen Eoy; but others he ascribes to the terminal
moraine of the principal glacier itself, which had retreated
during a series of milder seasons, so as to leave an interval
between the ice and the terminal moraine. This interspace
caused by the melting of ice becomes filled with water and
forms a lake, the drainage of which usually takes place by
262 COMPARATIVELY MODERN DATE OF THE CHAP. XIIT.
percolation through the porous parts of the moraine, and not
by a stream overflowing that barrier. Such a glacier-lake
Dr. Hooker actually found in existence near the head of the
Yangma valley in the Himalaya. It was moreover partially
bounded by recently formed marginal terraces or parallel
roads, implying changes of level in the barrier of ice and
moraine matter.*
It has been sometimes objected to the hypothesis of glacier-
lakes, as applied to the case of Glen Roy, that the shelves
must have taken a very long period for their formation. Such
a lapse of time, it is said, might be consistent with the theory
of pauses or stationary periods in the rise of the land during an
intermittent upward movement, but it is' hardly compatible
with the idea of so precarious and fluctuating a barrier as a
mass of ice. But the reader will have seen that the perma
nency of level in such glacier-lakes has no necessary con
nection with minor changes in the height of the supposed
dam of ice. If a glacier descending from higher mountains
through a tributary glen enters the main valley in which
there happens to be no glacier, the river is arrested in its
course and a lake is formed. The dam may be constantly
repaired and may vary in height several hundreds of feet
without affecting the level of the lake, so long as the surplus
waters escape over a c col' or parting ridge of rock. The
height at which the waters remain stationary is determined
solely by the elevation of the ' col,' and not by the barrier
of ice, provided the barrier is higher than the ' col.'
But if we embrace the theory of glacier-lakes, we must be
prepared to assume not only that the sea had nothing to do
with the original formation of the e parallel roads,' but that
it has never, since the disappearance of the lakes, risen in
any one of the glens up to the level of the lowest shelf, which
* Hooker, Himalaya Journal, vol. i. also profited by the author's personal
p. 242 ; ii. pp. 119, 121, 166. I have explanations.
CHAP. xin. PARALLEL ROADS OP GLEN ROY. 263
is about 850 feet high ; for in that case the remarkable per
sistency and integrity of the roads and deltas, before described,
must have been impaired.
We have seen (p. 244) that fifty miles to the south of
Lochaber, the glacier formations of Lanarkshire with marine
shells of arctic character have been traced to the height of
524 feet. About fifty miles to the south-east in Perthshire
are those stratified clays and sands, near Killiecrankie, which
were once supposed to be of submarine origin, and which in
that case would imply the former submergence of what is now
dry land to the extent of 1,550 feet, or several hundred feet
beyond the highest of the parallel roads. Even granting
that these laminated drifts may have had a different origin,
as above suggested (p. 246), there are still many facts
connected with the distribution of erratics and the striation
of rocks in Scotland which are not easily accounted for with
out supposing the country to have sunk, since the era of con
tinental ice, to a greater depth than 525 feet, the highest
point to which marine shells have yet been traced.
After what was said of the pressure and abrading power of
a general crust of ice, like that now covering Greenland, it
is almost superfluous to say that the parallel roads must
have been of later date than such a state of things, for every
trace of them must have been obliterated by the movement of
such a mass of ice. It is no less clear, that as no glacier-lakes
can now exist in Greenland, so there could have been none
in Scotland, when the mountains were covered with one great
crust of ice. It may, however, be contended, that the parallel
roads were produced when the general crust of ice first gave
place to a period of separate glaciers, and that no period of
deep submergence ever intervened in Lochaber after the
time of the lakes. Even in that case, however, it is difficult
not to suppose that the G-len Eoy country participated in the
downward movement which sank part of Lanarkshire 525
264 DATE OF GLEN EOT TERRACE LINES. CHAP. xm.
feet beneath the sea, subsequently to the first great glaciation
of Scotland (p. 244). Yet that amount of subsidence might
have occurred, and even a more considerable one, without
causing the sea to rise to the level of the lowest shelf, or to
a height of 850 feet above the present sea-level.
This is a question on which I am not prepared at present
to offer a decided opinion.
Whether the horizontally of the shelves or terrace-lines is
really as perfect as has been generally assumed, is a point
which will require to be tested by a more accurate trigono
metrical survey than has yet been made. The preservation
of precisely the same level in the lowest line throughout the
Grlens of Roy, Spean and Laggan, for a distance of twenty miles
east and west, and ten or twelve miles north and south, would
be very wonderful if ascertained with mathematical precision.
Mr. Jamieson, after making in 1862 several measurements
with a spirit-level, has been led to suspect a rise in the
lowest shelf of one foot in a mile in a direction from west to
east, or from the mouth of Grlen Roy to a point six miles
east of it in Grlen Spean. To confirm such observations, and
to determine whether a similar rate of rise continues eastward
as far as the pass of Muckul, would be most important.
On the whole, I conclude that the Grlen Roy terrace-lines
and those of some neighbouring valleys, were formed on the
borders of glacier-lakes, in times long subsequent to the
principal glaciation of Scotland. They may perhaps have
been nearly as late, especially the lowest of the shelves, as
that portion of the post-pliocene period in which man
coexisted in Europe with the mammoth.
CHAP. xiv. EXTINCT GLACIERS IN WALES. 265
CHAPTEE XIV.
CHRONOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD AND
THE EARLIEST SIGNS OF MAN'S APPEARANCE IN EUROPE,
Continued.
SIGNS OP EXTINCT GLACIERS IN WALES GEEAT SUBMERGENCE OP
WALES DURING THE GLACIAL PERIOD PROVED BY MARINE SHELLS
STILL GREATER DEPRESSION INFERRED FROM STRATIFIED DRIFT
SCARCITY OF ORGANIC REMAINS IN GLACIAL FORMATIONS SIGNS OF
EXTINCT GLACIERS IN ENGLAND ICE ACTION IN IRELAND MAPS
ILLUSTRATING SUCCESSIVE REVOLUTIONS IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
DURING THE POST-PLIOCENE PERIOD SOUTHERNMOST EXTENT OP
ERRATICS IN ENGLAND SUCCESSIVE PERIODS OF JUNCTION AND SEPA
RATION OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND THE CONTINENT TIME REQUIRED
FOR THESE CHANGES PROBABLE CAUSES OF THE UPHEAVAL AND
SUBSIDENCE OF THE EARTH* S CRUST ANTIQUITY OF MAN CONSIDERED
LV RELATION TO THE AGE OF THE EXISTING FAUNA AND FLORA.
Extinct Glaciers in Wales.
considerable amount of vertical movement in opposite
J- directions, which was suggested in the last chapter, as
affording the most prohable explanation of the position of
some of the stratified and fossiliferous drifts of Scotland,
formed since the commencement of the glacial period, will
appear less startling, if it can be shown that independent
observations lead us to infer that a geographical revolution
of still greater magnitude accompanied the successive phases
of glaciation through which the Welsh mountains have passed.
That Wales was once an independent centre of the dis
persion of erratic blocks, has long been acknowledged. Dr.
Buckland published in 1842 his reasons for believing that
the Snowdonian mountains in Caernarvonshire were formerly
266 WELSH GLACIAL DRIFT. CHAP. xiv.
covered with glaciers, which radiated from the central heights
through the seven principal valleys of that chain, where striae
and flutings are seen on the polished rocks directed towards
as many different points of the compass. He also described
the f moraines ' of the ancient glaciers, and the rounded
masses of polished rock, called in Switzerland ' roches mou-
tonnees.' His views respecting the old extinct glaciers of
North Wales were subsequently confirmed by Mr. Darwin,
who attributed the transport of many of the larger erratic
blocks to floating ice. Much of the Welsh glacial drift had
already been shown by Mr. Trimmer to have had a sub
marine origin, and Mr. Darwin maintained that when the
land rose again to nearly its present height, glaciers filled the
valleys, and f swept them clean of all the rubbish left by the
sea.' *
Professor Eamsay, in a paper read to the Geological Society
in 1851, and in a later work on the glaciation of North Wales,
described three successive glacial periods, during the first of
which the land was much higher than it now is, and the
quantity of ice excessive ; secondly, a period of submerg
ence when the land was 2,300 feet lower than at present, and
when the higher mountain tops only stood out of the sea as
a cluster of low islands, which nevertheless were covered
with snow ; and lastly, a third period when the marine boulder
drift formed in the middle period was ploughed out of the
larger valleys by a second set of glaciers, smaller than those
of the first period. This last stage of glaciation[may have coin
cided with that of the parallel roads of Glen Eoy, spoken of
in the last chapter. In Wales it was certainly preceded
by submergence, and the rocks had been exposed to glacial
polishing and friction before they sank.
Fortunately the evidence of the sojourn of the Welsh
* Philosophical Magazine, ser. 3, voL xxi. p. 180.
CHAP. XIT. PROOFS OP SUBMERGENCE. 267
mountains beneath the waters of the sea is not deficient, as
in Scotland, in that complete demonstration which the
presence of marine shells affords. The late Mr. Trimmer
discovered such shells on Moel Tryfane, in North Wales, in
drift elevated 1,392 feet above the level of the sea. It
appears from his observations, and those of the late Edward
Forbes, corroborated by others of Professor Eamsay and
Mr. Prestwich, that about twelve species of shells, including
Fusus bamfius, F. antiquus, Venus striatula (Forbes and
Hanley), have been met with at heights of between 1,000 and
1,400 feet, in drift, reposing on a surface of rock which
had been previously exposed to glacial friction 'and striation.
The shells, as a whole, are those of the glacial period,
and not of the Norwich Crag. Two localities of these shells
in Wales, in addition to that first pointed out by Mr. Trimmer,
have since been observed by Professor Eamsay, who, however,
is of opinion that the amount of submergence can by no
means be limited to the extreme height to which the shells
happen to have been traced ; for drift of the same character
as that of Moel Tryfane extends continuously to the height
of 2,300 feet,*
Rarity of Organic Remains in Glacial Formations.
The general dearth of shells in such formations, below as
well as above the level at which Mr. Trimmer first found
them, deserves notice. Whether we can explain it or not, it
is a negative character which seems to belong very generally
to deposits formed in glacial seas. The porous nature of the
strata, and the length of time during which they have been
permeated by rain-water, may partly account, as we hinted in
a former chapter, for the destruction of organic remains.
* Eamsay, Quarterly Geological Journal, vol. viii. p. 372, 1852
268 LIFE IN THE OCEAN AT GREAT DEPTHS. CHAP. xiv.
But it is also possible that they were originally scarce, for we
read of the waters of the sea being so freshened and chilled
by the melting of ice-bergs in some Norwegian and Icelandic
fiords, that the fish are driven away, and all the mollusca
killed. The moraines of glaciers are always from the first
devoid of shells, and if transported by ice-bergs to a distance,
and deposited where the ice melts, may continue as barren of
every indication of life, as they were when they originated.
Nevertheless, it may be said, on the other hand, that herds
of seals and walruses crowd the floating ice of Spitzbergen in
lat. 80 north, of which Mr. Lamont has recently given us a
lively picture,* and huge whales fatten on myriads of
pteropods in polar regions. It had been suggested that the
bottom of the sea, at the era of extreme submergence in
Scotland and Wales, was so deep as to reach the zero of
animal life, which, in part of the Mediterranean (the Egean,
for example), the late Edward Forbes fixed, after a long series
of dredgings, at 300 fathoms. But the shells of the glacial
drift of Scotland and Wales, when they do occur, are not
those of deep seas ; and, moreover, our faith in the unin
habitable state of the ocean at great depths has been rudely
shaken, by the recent discovery by Captain M'Clintock and
Dr. Wallich, of starfish in water more than a thousand fathoms
deep (7,560 feet !), midway between Greenland and Iceland.
That these radiata were really dredged up from the bottom,
and that they had been living and feeding there, appeared
from the fact that their stomachs were full of globigerina, of
which foraminiferous creatures, both living and dead, the oozy
bed of the ocean at that vast depth was found to be exclusively
composed.
Whatever may be the cause, the fact is certain, that over
large areas in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, I might add
* Seasons with the Sea-Horses, 1861.
CHAP. XIV. GLACIAL FOKMATIONS IN ENGLAND. 269
throughout the northern hemisphere en both sides of the
Atlantic, the stratified drift of the glacial period is very com
monly devoid of fossils, in spite of the occurrence here and
there, at the height of 500, 700, and even 1,400 feet, of marine
shells. These, when met with, belong, with few exceptions,
to known living species. I am therefore unable to agree with
Mr. Kjerulf that the amount of former submergence can be
measured by the extreme height at which shells happen to
have been found.
Glacial Formations in England.
The mountains of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and the
English lake district, afford equally unequivocal vestiges of ice-
Fig. 38
Dome-shaped rocks, or 'roches moutonnees,' in the valley of the Botha,
near Ambleside, from a drawing by E. Hull, F.G-.S.*
action not only in the form of polished and grooved surfaces,
but also of those rounded bosses before mentioned, as being so
abundant in the Alpine valleys of Switzerland, where glaciers
exist, or have existed. Mr. Hull has lately published a
faithful account of these phenomena, and has given a repre
sentation of some of the English 'roches moutonnees,' which
* Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. xi. pi. i. p. 31, 1860.
270 GLACIAL FORMATIONS IN IRELAND. CHAP. xiv.
precisely resemble hundreds of dome-shaped protuberances in
North Wales, Sweden, and North America.*
The marks of glaciation on the rocks, and the trans
portation of erratics from Cumberland to the eastward, have
been traced by Professor Phillips over a large part of York
shire, extending to a height of 1,500 feet above the sea; and
similar northern drift has been observed in Lancashire,
Cheshire, Derbyshire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, and Worcester
shire. It is rare to find marine shells, except at heights of
200 or 300 feet ; but a few instances of their occurrence have
been noticed, especially of Turritella communis (a gregarious
shell), far in the interior, at elevations of 500 feet, and even
of 700 in Derbyshire, and some adjacent counties, as I learn
from Mr. Binney and Mr. Prestwich.
Such instances are of no small theoretical interest, as
enabling us to account for the scattering of large erratic
blocks at equal or much greater elevations, over a large part
of the northern and midland counties, such as could only
have been conveyed to their present sites by floating ice.
Of this nature, among others, is a remarkable angular block
of syenitic greenstone, four feet and a half by four feet square,
and two feet thick, which Mr. Darwin describes as lying on
the summit of Ashley Heath, in Staffordshire, 803 feet above
the sea, resting on new red sandstone, f
Signs of Ice-action and Submergence in Ireland during
the Glacial Period.
In Ireland we encounter the same difficulty as in Scotland,
in determining how much of the glaciation of the higher
mountains should be referred to land glaciers, and how much
* Hull, Edinburgh New Philoso- shire, Philosophical Magazine, series
phical Journal, July 1860. 3, xxi. p. 180.
f Ancient Glaciers of Caernarvon-
CHAP. xiv. MAMMALIA SCARCE IN IRISH DRIFT. 271
to floating ice, during submergence. The signs of glacial
action have been traced by Professor Jukes to elevations
of 2,500 feet in the Killarney district, and to great heights
in other mountainous regions ; but marine shells have rarely
been met with higher than 600 feet above the sea, and that
chiefly in gravel, clay and sand in Wicklow and Wexford.
They are so rare in the drift east of the Wicklow mountains,
that an exception to the rule, lately observed at Ballymore
Eustace, by Professor Jukes, is considered as a fact of no small
geological interest. The wide extent of drift of the same
character, spread over large areas in Ireland, shows that the
whole island was, in some part of the glacial period, an archi
pelago, as represented in the maps, figs. 39, 40, pp. 276
and 278.
Speaking of the Wexford drift, the late Professor E. Forbes
states that Sir H. James found in it, together with many of
the usual glacial shells, several species which are characteristic
of the crag; among others the reversed variety of Fusus
antiquuSy called F. contrarius, and the extinct species
Nucula Cobboldice, and Turritella incrassata.* Perhaps a
portion of this drift of the south of Ireland may belong to
the close of the newer pliocene period, and may be of a some
what older date than the shells of the Clyde, alluded to at
p. 231. They may also correspond still more nearly in age
with the fauna of the uppermost strata of the Norwich Crag,
occurring at Chillesford, and alluded to p. 199.
The scarcity of mammalian remains in the Irish drift
favours the theory of its marine origin. In the superficial
deposits of the whole island, I have only met with three
recorded examples of the mammoth, one in the south near
Dungarvan, where the bones of Elephas primigenius, two
species of bear (Ursus Arctos, and Ursus spelceus?), the
* Forbes' Memoirs of Survey, &c., vol. i. p. 377.
272 DRIFT AND BOULDERS IN IRELAND. CHAP. XIV.
rein-deer, horse, &c., were found in a cave ; * another in the
centre of the island near Belturbet, in the county of Cavan.
Perhaps the conversion into land of the bed of the glacial
sea, and the immigration into the newly upheaved region of
the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, which coexisted
with the fabricators of the St. Acheul flint hatchets, were
events which preceded in time the elevation of the Irish
drift, and the union of that island with England. Ireland
may have continued for a longer time in the state of an
archipelago, and was therefore for a much shorter time
inhabited by the large extinct post-pliocene pachyderms.
In one of the reports of the geological survey of Ireland,
published in 1859, Professor Jukes, in explanation of sheet
184 of the maps, alludes to beds of sand and gravel, and signs
of the polishing and furrowing of the rocks in the counties
of Kerry and Killarney, as high as 2,500 feet above the sea,
and supposes (perhaps with good reason) that the land was
depressed even to that extent. He observes that above that
elevation (2,500 feet) the rocks are rough, and not smoothed,
as if by ice. Some of the drift was traced as high as 1,500 feet,
the highest hills there exceeding 3,400 feet. Mr. Jukes, how
ever, is by no means inclined to insist on submergence to
the extent of 2,500 feet, as he is aware that ice, like that
now prevailing in Greenland, might explain most, if not
all, the appearances of glaciation in the highest regions.
Although the course taken by the Irish erratics in general
is such that their transportation seems to have been due to
floating ice or coast-ice, yet some granite blocks have
travelled from south to north, as recorded by Sir E. Griffiths,
namely, those of the Ox Mountains in Sligo ; a fact from
which Mr. Jamieson infers that those mountains formed at
one time a centre of dispersion. In the same part of Ireland,
* E. Brenan and Dr. Carte, Dublin, 1859.
CHAP. xiv. DRIFT AND BOULDERS IN IRELAND. 273
the general direction in which the boulders have travelled is
everywhere from north-west to south-east, a course directly
at right angles to the prevailing trend of the present
mountain ridges.
Maps illustrating successive Revolutions in Physical
Geography during the Post-pliocene Period.
The late Mr. Trimmer, before referred to, has endeavoured
to assist our speculations as to the successive revolutions in
physical geography, through which the British Islands have
passed since the commencement of the glacial period, by
four ' sketch maps ' as he termed them, in the first of
which he gave an ideal restoration of the original Conti
nental period, called by him the first elephantine period, or
that of the forest of Cromer, before described (p. 214). He
was not aware that the prevailing elephant of that era
(E. meridionalis) was distinct from the mammoth. At this
era he conceived Ireland and England to have been united
with each other and with France, but much of the area re
presented as land in the map, fig. 41, p. 279, was supposed
to be under water. His second map, of the great submergence
of the glacial period, was not essentially different from our map,
fig. 39, p. 276. His third map expressed a period of partial
re-elevation, when Ireland was reunited to Scotland and the
north of England ; but England still separated from France.
This restoration appears to me to rest on insufficient data,
being constructed to suit the supposed area over which the
gigantic Irish deer, or Megaceros, migrated from east to west,
also to explain an assumed submergence of the district called
the Wealden, in the south-east of England, which had re
mained land during the grand glacial submergence.
The fourth map is a return to nearly the same continental
conditions as the first Ireland, England, and the Continent
T
274 MAPS ILLUSTRATING REVOLUTIONS CHAP. xiv.
being united. This he called the second elephantine period ;
and it would coincide very closely with that part of the post-
pliocene era in which man coexisted with the mammoth, and
when, according to Mr. Trimmer's hypothesis, the Thames
was a tributary of the Rhine.*
These geographical speculations were indulged in ten years
after Edward Forbes had published his bold generalisations
on the geological changes which accompanied the successive
establishment of the Scandinavian, Grermanic, and other living
floras and faunas in the British Islands, and, like the theories
of his predecessor, were the results of much reflection on a
vast body of geological facts. It is by repeated efforts of
this kind, made by geologists who are prepared for the partial
failure of some of their first attempts, that we shall ultimately
arrive at a knowledge of the long series of geographical
revolutions which have followed each other since the begin
ning of the post-pliocene period.
The map, fig. 39, p. 276, will give some idea of the great
extent of land which would be submerged, were we to infer,
as many geologists have done, from the joint evidence of
marine shells, erratics, glacial striae and stratified drift at
great heights, that Scotland was, during part of the glacial
period, 2,000 feet below its present level, and other parts of
the British Isles, 1,300 feet. A subsidence to this amount
can be demonstrated in the case of North Wales by marine
shells (see above, p. 267). In the lake district of Cumberland
and Yorkshire," and in Ireland, we must depend on proofs
derived from glacial striae and the transportation of erratics
for so much of the supposed submergence as exceeds 600
feet. As to central England, or the country north of the
Thames and Bristol Channel, marine shells of the glacial
period sometimes reach as high as 600 and 700 feet, and
erratics still higher, as we have seen above (p. 270). But
* Joshua Trimmer, Quarterly Geological Journal, vol. ix. plate xiii. 1853.
CHAP. xiv. IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 275
this region is of such moderate elevation above the sea, that
it would be almost equally laid under water, were there a
sinking of no more than 600 feet.
To make this last proposition clear, I have constructed,
from numerous documents, many of them unpublished, the
map, fig. 40, given at p. 278, which shows how that small
amount of subsidence would reduce the whole of the British
Isles to an archipelago of very small islands, with the excep
tion of parts of Scotland, and the north of England and Wales,
where four islands of considerable dimensions would still
remain.
As to the district south of the Thames and the Bristol
Channel, it seems to have remained land during the whole of
the glacial period at a time when the northern area was
under water.
The map, fig. 40, p. 278, just alluded to, represents
simply the effects of a downward movement of a hundred
fathoms, or 600 English feet, supposed to have been uniform
over the whole of the British Isles. It shows the very dif
ferent state of the physical geography of the area in question,
when contrasted with the results of an opposite movement,
or one of upheaval, to an equal amount, of which Sir Henry
de la Beche had already given us a picture (from which I
have borrowed the map, fig. 41, p. 279), in his excellent
treatise called ' Theoretical Eesearches.' *
If we are surprised when looking at the first map, fig. 40
at the vast expanse of sea which so moderate a subsidence
as 600 feet would cause, we shall probably be still more
astonished to perceive, in fig. 41, that a rise of the same
number of feet would unite all the British Isles, including
the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands, with one another and
the continent, and lay dry the sea now separating Great
Britain from Sweden and Denmark.
* Also repeated in De la Beche' s Geological Observer.
T 2
276
MAPS ILLUSTRATING REVOLUTIONS CHAP. xiv.
Fig. 39
MAP OF THE BRITISH ISLES AND PAET OF THE NORTH- WEST OF EUROPE,
SHOWING THE GREAT AMOUNT OF SUPPOSED SUBMERGENCE OF LAND
BENEATH THE SEA DURING PART OF THE GLACIAL PERIOD.
The submergence of Scotland is to the extent of 2,000 feet, and of
other parts of the British Isles, 1,300.
In the map, the dark shade expresses the land which alone remained
above water. The area shaded by diagonal lines is that which cannot be
shown to have been under water at the period of floating ice by the evi
dence of erratics, or by marine shells of northern species. How far the
several parts of the submerged area were simultaneously or successively
laid under water, 'in the course of the glacial period, cannot, in the present
state of our knowledge, be determined.
CHAP. xiv. IN BRITISH PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 277
It appears from soundings made during various Admiralty
surveys, that the gained land thus brought above the level of
the sea, instead of presenting a system of hills and valleys
corresponding with those usually characterising the interior
of most of our island, would form a nearly level terrace, or
gently inclined plane, sloping outwards like those terraces of
denudation and deposition which I have elsewhere described
as occurring on the coasts of Sicily and the Morea.*
It seems that, during former and perhaps repeated oscil
lations of level undergone by the British Isles, the sea has
had time to cut back the cliffs for miles in many places,
while in others the detritus derived from wasting cliffs
drifted along the shores, together with the sediment brought
down by rivers and swept by currents into submarine valleys,
has exerted a levelling power, filling up such depressions as
may have pre-existed. Owing to this twofold action few
marked inequalities of level have been left on the sea-bottom,
the s silver-pits ' off the mouth of the Humber offering a
rare exception to the general rule, and even there the narrow
depression is less than 300 feet in depth.
Beyond the 100 fathom line, the submarine slope sur
rounding the British coast is so much steeper that a second
elevation of equal amount (or of 600 feet) would add but
slightly to the area of gained land ; in other words, the 100
and 200 fathom lines run very near each other. -j"
The naturalist would have been entitled to assume the
former union, within the post-pliocene period, of all the British
Isles with each other and with the continent, as expressed in
the map, fig. 41, even if there had been no geological facts in
favour of such a junction. For in no other way would he be
able to account for the identity of the fauna and flora found
throughout these lands. Had they been separated ever since
* Manual of Greology, p. 74.
f De la Beche, Geological Kesearches, p. 191.
287
MAPS ILLUSTRATING REVOLUTIONS CHAP. xiv.
'Fig. 40
A.
MAP SHOWING WHAT PARTS OF THE BRITISH ISLANDS WOULD REMAIN
ABOVE WATER AFTER A SUBSIDENCE OF THE AREA TO THE EXTENT
OF 600 FEET.
The authorities to whom I am indebted for the information contained in this
map are for
SCOTLAND. A. Geikie, Esq., F.G.S. and T. F. Jamieson, Esq., of Ellon, Aber-
deenshire.
ENGLAND. For the counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Durham
Col. Sir Henry James, E.E.
Dorsetshire, Hampshire, and Isle of Wight H. W. Bristow, Esq.
Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, and part of Devon E. Etheridge, Esq.
Kent and Sussex Frederick Drew, Esq.
, Isle of Man W. Whitaker, Esq.
IRELAND. Eeduced from a contour map constructed by Lieut. Larcom, E.E.,
in 1837, for the Eailway Commissioners.
CHAP. XIV.
IN BRITISH PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY.
Fig. 41
279
MAP OF PART OF THE NORTH-WEST OF EUROPE, INCLUDING THE BRITISH
ISLES, SHOWING THE EXTENT OF SEA WHICH WOULD BECOME LAND IF
THERE WERE A GENERAL RISE OF THE AREA TO THE EXTENT OF 600
FEET.
The darker shade expresses what is now land, the lighter shade the sj
intervening between the present coast line and the 100 fathom line, wl
would be converted by such a movement into land.
280 REVOLUTIONS IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. CHAP. XIT.
the miocene period, like Madeira, Porto Santo, and the
Desertas, constituting the small Madeiran Archipelago, we
might have expected to discover a difference in the species
of land-shells, not only when Ireland was compared to Eng
land, but when different islands of the Hebrides were con
trasted one with another, and each of them with England.
It would not, however, be necessary, in order to effect the
complete fusion of the animals and plants which we witness,
to assume that all parts of the area formed continuous land
at one and the same moment of time, but merely that the
several portions were so joined within the post-pliocene era
as to allow the animals and plants to migrate freely in
succession from one district to another.
Southernmost Extent of Erratics in England.
In reference to that portion of the south of England which
is marked by diagonal lines in the map at p. 260, the theory
of its having been an area of dry land during the period of
great submergence and floating-ice does not depend merely
on negative evidence, such as the absence of the northern
drift or boulder clay on its surface ; but we have also, in favour
of the same conclusion, the remarkable fact of the presence of
erratic blocks on the southern coast of Sussex, implying the
existence there of an ancient coast-line at a period when the
cold must have been at its height.
These blocks are to be seen in greatest number at
Pagham and Selsea, fifteen miles south of Chichester, in
lat. 5040'N.
They consist of fragments of granite, syenite, and green
stone, as well as of Devonian and Silurian rocks, some of
them of large size. I measured one of granite at Pagham,
twenty-seven feet in circumference. They are not of nor
thern origin, but must have come from the coast of Nor-
CHAP. xiv. ERRATICS IN SUSSEX. 281
mandy or Brittany, from land which may. once have existed
to the south-west, in what is now the English Channel.
They were probably drifted into their present site by coast
ice, and the yellow clay and gravel in which they are em
bedded are a littoral formation, as shown by the shells.
Beneath the gravel containing these large erratics, is a blue
mud in which skeletons of Elephas antiquus, and other
mammalia, have been observed. Still lower occurs a sandy
loam, from which Mr. E. Gr. Austen* has collected thirty-
eight species of marine shells, all recent, but forming an
assemblage differing as a whole from that now inhabiting
the English Channel. The presence among them of Lutraria
rugosa and Pecten polymorphus, not known to range
farther north in the actual seas than the coast of Portugal,
indicates a somewhat warmer temperature at the time when
they flourished. Subsequently, there must have been great
cold when the Selsea erratics were drifted" into their present
position, and this cold doubtless coincided in time with a low
temperature farther north. These transported rocks of Sussex
are somewhat older than a sea-beach with recent marine
shells which at Brighton is covered by chalk rubble, called
the ( elephant-bed,' which I cannot describe in this place, but
allude to it as one of many geological proofs of the former
existence of a seashore in this region, and of ancient cliffs
bounding the channel between France and England, all of
older date than the close of the glacial period.
In order to form a connected view of the most simple
series of changes in physical geography which can possibly
account for the phenomena of the glacial period, and the
period of the establishment of the present provinces of animals
and plants, the following geographical states of the British
and adjoining areas may be enumerated.
* Geological Quarterly Journal, TO!, xiii. p. 50.
282 PERIODS OF JUNCTION AND SEPARATION CHAP. xiv.
First, a continental period, towards the close of which the
forest of Cromer flourished (p. 214) : when the land was at
least 500 feet above its present level, perhaps much higher, and
its extent probably greater than that given in the map, fig. 41.
Secondly, a period of submergence, by which the land
north of the Thames and Bristol Channel, and that of Ireland,
was gradually reduced to such an archipelago as is pictured
in map, fig. 40 ; and finally to such a general prevalence of
sea as is seen in map, fig. 39. This was the period of great
submergence and of floating ice, when the Scandinavian flora,
which occupied the lower grounds during the first continental
period, may have obtained exclusive possession of the only
lands not covered with perpetual snow.
Thirdly, a second continental period when the bed of the
glacial sea, with its marine shells and erratic blocks, was laid
dry, and when the quantity of land equalled that of the first
period, and therefore probably exceeded that represented in
the map, p. 279. During this period there were glaciers in
the higher mountains of Scotland and Wales, and the Welsh
glaciers, as we have seen, pushed before them and cleared
out the marine drift with which some valleys had been filled
during the period of submergence. The parallel roads of
Grlen Eoy are referable to some part of the same era.
As a reason for presuming that the land which in map,
fig. 41, p. 279, is only represented as 600 feet above its present
level, was during part of this period much higher, Professor
Ramsay has suggested that, as the previous depression far
exceeded a hundred fathoms (amounting in Wales to 1,400
feet, as shown by marine shells, and to 2,300, by stratified
drift), it is not improbable that the upward movement was on
a corresponding scale.
In passing from the period of chief submergence to this
second continental condition of things, we may conceive a
gradual change first from that of map 39 to map 40, then
CHAP. xiv. OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND THE CONTINENT. 283
from the latter phase to that of map 41, and finally to still
greater accessions of land. During this last period the
passage of the Germanic flora into the British area took place,
and the Scandinavian plants, together with northern insects,
birds, and quadrupeds, retreated into the higher grounds.
The first appearance of man, when, together with the mam
moth and woolly rhinoceros, or with the Elephas antiquus,
Rhinoceros liemitwchus, and Hippopotamus major, he ranged
freely from all parts of the continent into the British area,
belongs probably to a late portion of this second continental
period.
Fourthly, the next and last change comprised the break
ing up of the land of the British area once more into nu
merous islands, ending in the present geographical condition
of things. There were probably many oscillations of level
during this last conversion of continuous land into islands,
and such movements in opposite directions would account for
the occurrence of marine shells at moderate heights above
the level of the sea, notwithstanding a general lowering of the
land. To the close of this era belong the marine deposits of
the Clyde and the Carses of the Tay and Forth, before alluded
to, pp. 47, 51, 54.
In a memoir by Professor E. Forbes, before cited, he
observes, that the land of passage by which the plants and
animals migrated into Ireland consisted of the upraised
marine drift which had previously formed the bottom of the
glacial sea. Portions of this drift extend to the eastern shores
of Wicklow and Wexford, others are found in the Isle of Man
full of arctic shells, others on the British coast opposite
Ireland. The freshwater marl, containing numerous skeletons
of the great deer, or Megaceros, overlie in the Isle of Man that
marine glacial drift. Professor Forbes also remarks that the
subsequent disjunction of Ireland from England, or the for
mation of the St. George's Channel, which is less than 400
284 PEKIODS OF JUNCTION AND SEPARATION CHAP. xiv.
feet in its greatest depth, preceded the opening of the Straits
of Dover, or the final separation of England from the Conti
nent. This he inferred from the present distribution of
species both in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Thus
for example, there are twice as many reptiles in Belgium as
in England, and the number inhabiting England is twice
that found in Ireland. Yet the Irish species are all com
mon to England, and all the English to Belgium. It is there
fore assumed that the migration of species westward having
been the work of time, there was not a sufficient lapse of ages
to complete the fusion of the continental and British rep
tilian fauna, before France was separated from England and
England from Ireland.
For the same reason there are also a great number of birds
of short flight, and small quadrupeds, inhabiting England
which do not cross to Ireland, the St. Greorge's Channel
seeming to have arrested them in their westward course.*
The depth of the St. Greorge's Channel in the narrower
parts is only 360 feet, and the English Channel between
Dover and Calais less than 200, and rarely anywhere
more than 300 feet ; so that vertical movements of slight
amount compared to some of those previously considered,
with the aid of denuding operations or the waste of sea cliffs,
and the scouring out of the channel, might in time effect the
insulation of the lands above alluded to.
Time required for successive Changes in Physical Geo
graphy in the Post-Pliocene Period.
The time which it would require to bring about such
changes of level, according to the average rate assumed at
p. 58, however vast, will not be found to exceed that which
* E. Forbes, Fauna and Flora of British Isles ; Memoirs of Geological Survey,
Tol. i. p. 344, 1846.
CHAP. xiv. OF ENGLAND, IRELAND, AND THE CONTINENT. 285
would best explain the successive fluctuations in terrestrial
temperature, the glaciation of solid rocks, the transpor
tation of erratics above and below the sea level, the height
of arctic shells above the sea, and last, not least, the migra
tion of the existing species of animals and plants into their
actual stations, and the extinction of some conspicuous
forms which flourished during the post-pliocene ages. When
we duly consider all these changes which have taken place
since the beginning of the glacial epoch, or since the Forest
of Cromer and the Elephas meridionalis flourished, we shall
find that the phenomena become more and more intelligible
in proportion to the slowness of the rate of elevation and
depression which we assume.
The submergence of Wales to the extent of 1,400 feet, as
proved by glacial shells, would require 56,000 years, at the
rate of 2 j- feet per century ; but taking Professor Eamsay's
estimate of 800 feet more, as stated at p. 267, that elevation
being required for the deposition of some of the stratified drift,
we must demand an additional period of 32,000 years, amount
ing in all to 88,000 ; and the same time would be required for
the re-elevation of the tract to its present height. But if the
land rose in the second continental period no more than
600 feet above the present level, as in map, p. 279, this 600
feet would have taken another 26,000 years ; the whole of the
grand oscillation, comprising the submergence and re-emer
gence, having taken, in round numbers, 180,000 years for its
completion ; and this, even if there were no pause or stationary
period, when the downward movement ceased, and before it
was converted into an upward one.
I am aware that it may be objected that the average rate
here proposed is a purely arbitrary and conjectural one,
because, at the North Cape, it is supposed that there has been
a rise of about six feet in a century, and at Spitzbergen,
according to Mr. Lamont, a still faster upheaval during the
286 TIME REQUIRED FOR CHANGES OF LEVEL, CHAP. xiv.
last 400 years.* But, granting that in these and some ex
ceptional cases (none of them as yet very well established)
the rising or sinking has, for a time, been accelerated, I do
not believe the average rate of motion to exceed that above
proposed. Mr. Darwin, I find, considers that such a mean
rate of upheaval would be as high as we could assume for
the west coast of South America, where we have more evidence
of sudden changes of level than anywhere else. He has
not, however, attempted to estimate the probable rate of
secular elevation in that or any other region.
Little progress has yet been made in divining the most
probable causes of these great movements of the earth's crust ;
yet what little we know of the state of the interior leads us
to expect that the gradual expansion or contraction of large
portions of the solid crust may be the result of fluctuations in
temperature, with which the existence of hundreds of active
and thousands of extinct volcanoes is probably connected.
It is ascertained that solid rocks, such as granite and
sandstone, expand and contract annually, even under such
a moderate range of temperature as that of a Canadian
winter and summer. If the heat should go on increasing
through a thickness, say only of ten miles of the earth's
crust, the gradual upheaval . of the incumbent mass may
amount to many hundreds of feet ; and the elevation may be
carried still farther, by the complete fusion of part of the
inferior rocks.
According to the experiments of Deville, the contraction
of granite, in passing from a melted, or as some would say its
plastic condition, to a solid state, must be more than ten
per cent.f So that we have at our command a source of
depression on a grand scale, at every period when granitic
* Seasons with the Sea-Horses, p. 202.
f Bulletin de la Societe Greologique, 2nd series, vol. iv. p. 1312.
CHAP. xiv. AND PROBABLE CAUSES OF MOVEMENTS. 287
rocks have originated in the interior of the earth's crust.
All mineralogists are agreed that the passage of voluminous
masses, from a liquid or pasty to a solid and crystalline
state, must be an extremely slow process. It may often
happen that, in the same series of superimposed rocks, some
are expanding while still solid or while partially melting, while
others are at the same time crystallising and contracting ; so
that the alterations of level at the surface may be the result
of complicated and often of conflicting agencies. The more
gradually we conceive such changes to take place, the more
comprehensible they become in the eyes of the chemist
and natural philosopher who speculates on the changes of
the earth's interior ; and the more fertile are they in the
hands of the geologist in accounting for revolutions on the
habitable surface.
We may presume, that after the movement has gone on for
a long time in one determinate direction, whether of eleva
tion or depression, the change to an opposite movement,
implying the substitution of a heating for a refrigerating
operation, or the reverse, would not take place suddenly ; but
would be marked by a period of inaction, or of slight move
ment, or such a state of quiescence, as prevails throughout
large areas of dry land in the normal condition of the
globe.
I see no reason for supposing that any part of the revo
lutions in physical geography, to which the maps above
described have reference, indicate any catastrophes greater
than those which the present generation has witnessed. If
man was in existence when the Cromer forest was becoming
submerged, he would have felt no more alarm than the
Danish settlers on the east coast of Baffin's Bay, when they
found the poles, which they had driven into the beach to
secure their boats, had subsided below their original level.
Already, perhaps, the melting ice has thrown down till
288 CAUSES OF UPHEAVAL AND SUBSIDENCE. CHAP. xiv.
and boulders upon those poles, a counterpart of the boulder
clay which overlies the forest-bed on the Norfolk cliffs.
We have seen that all the plants and shells, marine and
freshwater, of the forest bed, and associated fluvio-marine
strata of Norfolk, are specifically identical with those of the
living European flora and fauna ; so that if upon such a
stratum a deposit of the present period, whether freshwater
or marine, should be thrown down, it might lie conformably
over it, and contain the same invertebrate fauna and flora.
The strata so superimposed would, in ordinary geological
language, be called contemporaneous, not only as belonging
to the same epoch, but as appertaining strictly to the same
subdivision of one and the same epoch ; although they would
in fact have been separated by an interval of several hundred
thousand years.
If, in the lower of the two formations, some of the
mammalia of the genera elephant and rhinoceros were
found to be distinct in species from those of the same genera
in the upper or ' recent ' stratum, it might appear as though
there had been a sudden coming in of new forms, and a
sudden dying out of old ones; for there would not have
been time in the interval for any perceptible change in the
invertebrate fauna, by which alone we usually measure the
lapse of time in the older formations.
When we are contrasting the vertebrate contents of two
sets of superimposed strata of the cretaceous, oolitic, or any
other ancient formation in which the shells are identical in
species, we ought never to lose sight of the possibility of
their having been separated by such intervals or by two or three
thousand centuries. That number of years may sometimes
be of small moment in reference to the rate of fluctuation of
species in the lower animals, but very important when the
succession of forms in the highest classes of vertebrata is
concerned.
CHAP. xiv. MAN'S AGE IN EELATION TO PRESENT FAUNA. 289
If we reflect on the long series of events of the post-
pliocene and recent periods contemplated in this chapter, it
will be remarked that the time assigned to the first appear
ance of man, so far as our geological inquiries have yet gone, is
extremely modern in relation to the age of the existing fauna
and flora, or even to the time when most of the living species
of animals and plants attained their actual geographical
distribution. At the same time it will also be seen, that if
the advent of man in Europe occurred before the close of
the second continental period, and antecedently to the se
paration of Ireland from England and of England from the
continent, the event would be sufficiently remote to cause the
historical period to appear quite insignificant in duration,
when compared to the antiquity of the human race.
;290 EXTINCT GLACIERS OF SWITZERLAND. CHAP. xv.
CHAPTEE XV.
EXTINCT GLACIERS OF THE ALPS AND THEIR CHRONOLOGICAL
RELATION TO THE HUMAN PERIOD.
EXTINCT GLACD3RS OF SWITZERLAND ALPINE ERRATIC BLOCKS ON
THE JURA NOT TRANSPORTED BY FLOATING ICE EXTINCT GLACIERS
OF THE ITALIAN SIDE OF THE ALPS THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF
LAKE-BASINS BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIERS, CONSIDERED
SUCCESSIVE PHASES IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF GLACIAL ACTION IN THE
ALPS PROBABLE RELATION OF THESE TO THE EARLIEST KNOWN DATE
OF MAN CORRESPONDENCE OF THE SAME WITH SUCCESSIVE CHANGES
IN THE GLACIAL CONDITION OF THE SCANDINAVIAN AND BRITISH MOUN
TAINS COLD PERIOD IN SICILY AND SYRIA.
Extinct Glaciers of Switzerland.
WE have seen in the preceding chapters that the mountains
of Scandinavia, Scotland, and North Wales have served,
during the glacial period, as so many independent centres
for the dispersion of erratic blocks, just as at present the ice-
covered continent of North Greenland is sending down ice
in all directions to the coast, and filling Baffin's Bay with
floating bergs, many of them laden with fragments of rocks.
Another great European centre of ice-action during the post-
pliocene period was the Alps of Switzerland, and I shall now
proceed to consider the chronological relations of the extinct
Alpine glaciers to those of more northern countries pre
viously treated of.
The Alps lie far south of the limits of the northern drift
described in the foregoing pages, being situated between the
44th and 47th degrees of north latitude. On the flanks of
these mountains, and on the sub Alpine ranges of hills or
CHAP. XV. THEIR GREAT EXTENT. 291
plains adjoining them, those appearances which have been
so often alluded to, as distinguishing or accompanying the
drift, between the 50th and 70th parallels of north latitude,
suddenly reappear and assume, in a southern region, a truly
arctic development. Where the Alps are highest, the largest
erratic blocks have been sent forth; as, for example, from
the regions of Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, into the adjoin
ing parts of Switzerland and Italy ; while in districts where
the great chain sinks in altitude, as in Carinthia, Carniola,
and elsewhere, no such rocky fragments, or a few only and
of smaller bulk, have been detached and transported to a
distance.
In the year 1821, M. Venetz first announced his opinion
that the Alpine glaciers must formerly have extended far
beyond their present limits, and the proofs appealed to by
him in confirmation of this doctrine were afterwards ac
knowledged by M. Charpentier, who strengthened them by
new observations and arguments, and declared, in 1836, his
conviction that the glaciers of the Alps must once have
reached as far as the Jura, and have carried thither their
moraines across the great valley of Switzerland. M. Agassiz,
after several excursions in the Alps with M. Charpentier,
and after devoting himself some years to the study of glaciers,
published, in 1840, an admirable description of them and of
the marks which attest the former action of great masses of
ice over the entire surface of the Alps and the surrounding
country.* He pointed out that the surface of every large
glacier is strewed over with gravel and stones detached from
the surrounding precipices by frost, rain, lightning, or ava
lanches. And he described more carefully than preceding
writers the long lines of these stones, which settle on the
sides of the glacier, and are called the lateral moraines ; those
* Agassiz, Etudes sur les Glaciers et Systeme Grlaciaire.
u 2
292 OSCILLATIONS OF ALPINE GLACIERS. CHAP. xv.
found at the lower end of the ice being called terminal
moraines. Such heaps of earth and boulders every glacier
pushes before it when advancing, and leaves behind it when
retreating. When the Alpine glacier reaches a lower and
a warmer situation, about 3,000 or 4,000 feet above the sea,
it melts so rapidly that, in spite of the downward movement
of the mass, it can advance no farther. Its precise limits are
variable from year to year, and still more so from century to
century ; one example being on record of a recession of half
a mile in a single year. We also learn from M. Venetz, that
whereas, between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, all the
Alpine glaciers were less advanced than now, they began in
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to push forward, so
as to cover roads formerly open, and to overwhelm forests of
ancient growth.
These oscillations enable the geologist to note the marks
which a glacier leaves behind it as it retrogrades ; and among
these the most prominent, as before stated, are the terminal
moraines, or mounds of unstratified earth and stones, often
divided by subsequent floods into hillocks, which cross the
valley like ancient earth-works, or embankments made to
dam up a river. Some of these transverse barriers were
formerly pointed out by Saussure below the glacier of the
Rhone, as proving how far it had once transgressed its present
boundaries. On these moraines we see many large angular
fragments, which, having been carried along the surface of
the ice, have not had their edges worn off by friction ; but
the greater number of the boulders, even those of large size,
have been well rounded, not by the power of water, but by
the mechanical force of the ice, which has pushed them
against each other, or against the rocks flanking the valley.
Others have fallen down the numerous fissures which intersect
the glacier, where, being subject to the pressure of the whole
mass of ice, they have been forced along, and either well
CHAP. xv. MOEAINES AND GLACIAL FURROWS. 293
rounded or ground down into sand, or even the finest mud,
of which the moraine is largely constituted.
As the terminal moraines are the most prominent of all the
monuments left by a receding glacier, so are they the most
liable to obliteration ; for violent floods or debacles are some
times occasioned in the Alps by the sudden bursting of
glacier-lakes, or those temporary sheets of water before al
luded to, which are caused by the damming up of a river by
a glacier which has increased during a succession of cold
seasons, and descending from a tributary into the main valley,
has crossed it from side to side. On the failure of this icy
barrier, the accumulated waters, being let loose, sweep away
and level many a transverse mound of gravel and loose
boulders below, and spread their materials in confused and
irregular beds over the river-plain.
Another mark of the former action of glaciers, in situa
tions where they exist no longer, is the polished, striated, and
grooved surfaces of rocks before described. Stones which lie
underneath the glacier and are pushed along by it, sometimes
adhere to the ice, and as the mass glides slowly along at the
rate of a few inches, or at the utmost two or three feet, per
day, abrade, groove, and polish the rock, and the larger
blocks are reciprocally grooved and polished by the rock on
their lower sides. As the forces both of pressure and propul
sion are enormous, the sand, acting like emery, polishes the
surface ; the pebbles, like coarse gravers, scratch and furrow
it ; and the large stones scoop out grooves in it. Lastly, pro
jecting eminences of rock, called 'roches moutonnees' (see
above, p. 269), are smoothed and worn into the shape of
flattened domes where the glaciers have passed over them.
Although the surface of almost every kind of rock, when
exposed to the open air, wastes away by decomposition, yet
some retain for ages their polished and furrowed exterior :
and, if they are well protected by a covering of clay or turf,
294 ALPINE ERRATICS ON THE JURA. CHAP. xv.
these marks of abrasion seem capable of enduring for ever.
They have been traced in the Alps to great heights above the
present glaciers, and to great horizontal distances beyond
them.
Another effect of a glacier is to lodge a ring of stones
round the summit of a conical peak which may happen to
project through the ice. If the glacier is lowered greatly by
melting, these circles of large angular fragments, which are
called ' perched blocks,' are left in a singular situation near
the top of a steep hill or pinnacle, the lower parts of which
may be destitute of boulders.
Alpine erratic Blocks on the Jura.
Now some or all the marks above enumerated, the mo
raines, erratics, polished surfaces, domes, striae, and perched
rocks are observed in the Alps at great heights above the
present glaciers, and far below their actual extremities; also in
the great valley of Switzerland, fifty miles broad ; and almost
everywhere on the Jura, a chain which lies to the north of
this valley. The average height of the Jura is about one-
third that of the Alps, and it is now entirely destitute of
glaciers; yet it presents almost everywhere moraines, and
polished and grooved surfaces of rocks. The erratics, more
over, which cover it present a phenomenon which has as
tonished and perplexed the geologist for more than half a
century. No conclusion can be more incontestable than that
these angular blocks of granite, gneiss, and other crystalline
formations, came from the Alps, and that they have been
brought for a distance of fifty miles and upwards across one of
the widest and deepest valleys of the world ; so that they are
now lodged on the hills and valleys of a chain composed of
limestone and other formations, altogether distinct from those
of the Alps. Their great size and angularity, after a journey
CHAP. xv. GREAT ICE-SHEET OF SWITZERLAND. 295
of so many leagues, has justly excited wonder, for hundreds
of them are as large as cottages ; and one in particular, com
posed of gneiss, celebrated under the name of Pierre a Bot,
rests on the side of a hill about 900 feet above the lake of
Neufchatel, and is no less than forty feet in diameter. But
there are some far-transported masses of granite and gneiss
which are still larger, and which have been found to contain
50,000 and 60,000 cubic feet of stone ; and one limestone block
at Devens, near Bex, which has travelled thirty miles, contains
161,000 cubic feet, its angles being sharp and unworn.
Von Buch, Escher, and Studer inferred, from an exami
nation of the mineral composition of the boulders, that those
resting on the Jura, opposite the lakes of Greneva and Neuf-
chatel, have come from the region of Mont Blanc and the
Valais, as if they had followed the course of the Bhone, to the
lake of Greneva, and had then pursued their way uninter
ruptedly in a northerly direction.
M. Charpentier, who conceived the Alps in the period of
greatest cold to have been higher by several thousand feet
than they are now, had already suggested that the Alpine
glaciers once reached continuously to the Jura, conveying
thither the large erratics in question.* M. Agassiz, on the
other hand, instead of introducing distinct and separate
glaciers, imagined that the whole valley of Switzerland might
have been filled with ice, and that one great sheet of it ex
tended from the Alps to the Jura, the two chains being of the
same height as now relatively to each other. To this idea it
was objected that the difference of altitude, when distributed
over a space of 50 miles, would give an inclination of
two degrees only, or far less than that of any known
glacier. In spite of this difficulty, the hypothesis has since
received the support of Professor James Forbes, in his very
able work on the Alps, published in 1843.
* D'Arduac, Histoire des Progress, &c. torn. ii. p. 249.
296 GLACIERS OF CHILIAN ANDES. CHAP. xv.
In 1841, I advanced, jointly with Mr. Darwin,* the theory
that the erratics may have been transferred by floating ice to
the Jura, at the time when the greater part of that chain, and
the whole of the Swiss valley to the south, was under the sea.
We pointed out, that if at that period the Alps had attained
only half their present altitude, they would yet have con
stituted a chain as lofty as the Chilian Andes, which, in a
latitude corresponding to Switzerland, now send down glaciers
to the head of every sound, from which icebergs, covered with
blocks of granite, are floated seaward. Opposite that part of
Chili where the glaciers abound, is situated the island of
Chiloe, one hundred miles in length, with a breadth of thirty
miles, running parallel to the continent. The channel which
separates it from the main land is of considerable depth, and
twenty-five miles broad. Parts of its surface, like the adja
cent coast of Chili, are overspread with recent marine shells,
showing an upheaval of the land during a very modern period ;
and beneath these shells is a boulder deposit, in which
Mr. Darwin found large blocks of granite and syenite, which
had evidently come from the Andes.
A continuance in future of the elevatory movement, now
observed to be going on in this region of the Andes and of
Chiloe, might cause the former chain to rival the Alps in
altitude, and give to Chiloe a height equal to that of the Jura.
The same rise might dry up the channel between Chiloe and
the main land, so that it would then represent the great
valley of Switzerland.
Sir Koderick I. Murchison, after making several impor
tant geological surveys of the Alps, proposed, in 1849, a
theory agreeing essentially with that suggested by Mr. Dar
win and myself, viz. that the erratics were transported to the
Jura, at a time when the great strath of Switzerland, and
* See Elements of Geology, 2nd ed. 1841.
CHAP. XV. THEORIES OF CHARPENTIER AND GUYOT. 297
many valleys receding far into the Alps, were under water.
He thought it impossible that the glacial detritus of the
Rhone could ever have been carried to the Lake of Geneva,
and beyond it by a glacier, or that so vast a body of ice
issuing from one narrow valley could have spread its erratics
over the low country of the Cantons of Vaud, Friburg, Berne,
and Soleure, as well as the slopes of the Jura, comprising a
region of about a hundred miles in breadth from south-west
to north-east, as laid down in the map of Charpentier. He
therefore imagined the granitic blocks to have been trans
lated to the Jura by ice- floats when the intermediate country
was submerged.* It may be remarked that this theory, pro
vided the water be assumed to have been salt or brackish,
demands quite as great an oscillation in the level of the land
as that on which Charpentier had speculated, the only differ
ence being that the one hypothesis requires us to begin with
a subsidence of 2,500 or 3,000 feet, and the other, with an
elevation to the same amount. We should also remember
that the crests or watersheds of the Alps and Jura are about
eighty miles apart, and if once we suppose them to have been
in movement during the glacial period, it is very probable
that the movements at such a distance may not have been
strictly uniform. If so, the Alps may have been relatively
somewhat higher, which would greatly have facilitated the
extension of Alpine glaciers to the flanks of the less elevated
chain.
Five years before the publication of the memoir last men
tioned, M. Oruyot had brought forward a great body of new
facts in support of the original doctrine of Charpentier, that
the Alpine glaciers once reached as far as the Jura, and that
they had deposited thereon a portion of their moraines.f
The scope of his observations and argument was laid with
* Quarterly Geological Journal, f Bulletin de la Societe des Sciences
1850, vol. vi. p. 65. Naturelles de Neufchatel, 1845.
298 ORDERLY DISTRIBUTION OF ALPINE ERRATICS. CHAF. xv.
great clearness before the British public in 1852 by Mr.
Charles Maclaren, who had himself visited Switzerland for
the sake of forming an independent opinion on a theoretical
question of so much interest, and on which so many eminent
men of science had come to such opposite conclusions.*
M. Gruyot had endeavoured to show that the Alpine erratics,
instead of being scattered at random over the Jura and the
great plain of Switzerland, are arranged in a certain deter
minate order, strictly analogous to that which ought to
prevail if they had once constituted the lateral, medial, and
terminal moraines of great glaciers. The rocks chiefly relied
on as evidence of this distribution consist of three varieties of
granite, besides gneiss, chlorite-slate, euphotide, serpentine,
and a peculiar kind of conglomerate, all of them mineral
compounds, foreign alike to the great strath between the
Alps and Jura, and to the structure of the Jura itself. In
these two regions, limestones, sandstones, and clays of the
secondary and tertiary formations alone crop out at the surface,
so that the travelled fragments of Alpine origin can easily
be distinguished, and in some cases the precise localities
pointed out from whence they must have come.
The accompanying map or diagram, slightly altered from
one given by Mr. Maclaren, will enable the reader more
fully to appreciate the line of argument relied on by M.
Gruyot. The dotted area is that over which the Alpine
fragments were spread by the supposed extinct glacier of the
Khone. The site of the present reduced glacier of that name
is shown at A. From that point, the boulders may first be
traced to B, or Martigny, where the valley takes an abrupt
turn at right angles to its former course. Here the blocks
belonging to the right side of the river, or derived from c, d, e,
have not crossed over to the left side at B, as they should
* Edinburgh. New Philosophical Magazine, October 1852.
CHAP. xv. MAP OF EXTINCT GLACIER OF THE RHONE.
299
have done had they been transported by floating ice, but
continue to keep to the side to which they belonged, assum-
Fig. 42
MAP SHOWING THE SUPPOSED COURSE OF THE ANCIENT AND NOW EX
TINCT GLACIER OF THE RHONE, AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE
ERRATIC BLOCKS AND DRIFT CONVEYED BY IT TO THE GREAT VALLEY
OF SWITZERLAND AND THE JURA.
ing that they once formed part of a right lateral moraine of
a great extinct glacier. That glacier, after arriving at the
lower end of the long narrow valley of the upper Khone at F,
filled the lake of Geneva, F, I, with ice. From F, as from a
great vomitory, it then radiated in all directions, bearing
along with it the moraines with which it was loaded, and
spreading them out on all sides over the great plain. But
300 DIRECTION TAKEN BY THE ERRATICS, CHAP. xv.
the principal icy mass moved straight onwards in a direct line
towards the hill of Chasseron, G (precisely opposite F), where
the Alpine erratics attain their maximum of height on the
Jura, that is to say, 2,015 English feet above the level of the
Lake of Neufchatel, or 3,450 feet above the sea. The granite
blocks which have ascended to this eminence G, came from
the east shoulder of Mont Blanc, A, having travelled in the
direction B, F, G.
When these and the accompanying blocks resting on the
south-eastern declivity of the Jura are traced from their
culminating point a, in opposite directions, whether westward
towards Geneva, or eastwards towards Soleure, they are found
to decline in height from the middle of the arc G, towards
the two extremities I an<J K, both of which are at a lower
level than G, by about 1,500 feet. In other words, the
ice of the extinct glacier, having mounted up on the sloping
flanks of the Jura in the line of greatest pressure to its highest
elevation, began to decline laterally in the manner of a pliant
or viscous mass, with a gentle inclination, till it reached two
points distant from each other no less than 100 miles.
In further confirmation of this theory, M. Gruyot observed
that fragments derived from the right bank of the great valley
of the Rhone, c, d, e, are found on the right side of the great
Swiss basin or strath, as at I and m, while those derived from
the left bank, p, h, occur on the left side of the basin, or on
the Jura, between G and i; and those again derived from
places farthest up on the left bank and nearest the source of
the Rhone, as n o, occupy the middle of the great basin, con
stituting, between m and K, what M. Gruyot calls the frontal
or terminal moraine of the eastern prolongation of the old
glacier.
A huge boulder of talcose granite, now at Steinhoff, ten
miles east fromK, or Soleure, containing 61,000 cubic French
feet, or equal in bulk to a mass measuring 40 feet in every
CHAP. xv. NOT DUE TO FLOATING ICE. 01
direction, was ascertained by Charpentier, from its com
position, to have been derived from n, one of the highest
points on the left side of the Rhone valley, far above
Martigny. From this spot it must have gone all round
by F, which is the only outlet to the deep valley, so as to
have performed a journey of no less than 150 miles !
General Transportation of Erratics in Switzerland due to
Glaciers and not to floating Ice.
It is evident that the above described restriction of certain
fragments of peculiar lithological character to that bank of
the Rhone where the parent rocks are alone met with, and
the linear arrangement of the blocks in corresponding order
on the opposite side of the great plain of Switzerland, are
facts, which harmonise singularly well with the theory of
glaciers, while they are wholly irreconcilable with that of
floating ice. Against the latter hypothesis, all the arguments
which Charpentier originally brought forward in opposition
to the first popular doctrine of a grand debacle, or sudden
flood, rushing down from the Alps to the Jura, might be
revived. Had there ever been such a rush of muddy water,
said he, the blocks carried down the basins of the principal
Swiss rivers, such as the Rhone, Aar, Reuss, and Limmat,
would all have been mingled confusedly together instead of
having each remained in separate and distinct areas as they
do and should do according to the glacial hypothesis.
M. Morlot presented me in 1857 with an unpublished map
of Switzerland in which he had embodied the results of
his own observations, and those of MM. Gruyot, Escher,
and others, marking out by distinct colours the limits of the
ice-transported detritus proper to each of the great river-
basins. The arrangement of the drift and erratics thus
depicted accords perfectly well with Charpentier's views, and
302 TRANSPORTATION OF ALPINE ERRATICS, CHAP. xv.
is quite irreconcilable with the supposition of the scattered
blocks having been dispersed by floating ice when Switzerland
was submerged.
As opposed to the latter hypothesis, I may also state that
nowhere as yet have any marine shells or other fossils than
those of a terrestrial character, such as the bones of the
mammoth, and a few other mammalia, and some coniferous
wood, been detected in those drifts, though they are often
many hundreds of feet in thickness.
A glance at M. Morlot's map, above alluded to,* will show
that the two largest areas, indicated by a single colour, are
those over which the Ehone and the Ehine are supposed
to have spread out in ancient times their enormous moraines.
One of these only, that of the Ehone, has been exhibited
in our diagram, fig. 42, p. 299. The distinct character
of the drift in the two cases is such as it would be if
two colossal glaciers should now come down from the higher
Alps through the valleys traversed by those rivers, leaving
their moraines in the low country. The space occupied
by the glacial drift of the Ehine is equal in dimensions,
or rather exceeds, that of the Ehone, and its course is not
interfered with in the least degree by the Lake of Constance,
forty-five miles long, any more than is the dispersion of the
erratics of the Ehone, by the Lake of Geneva, about fifty
miles in length. The angular and other blocks have in both
instances travelled on precisely as if those lakes had no
existence, or as if, which was no doubt the case, they had
been filled with solid ice.
During my last visit to Switzerland in 1857, I made ex
cursions, in company with several distinguished geologists, for
the sake of testing the relative merits of the two rival theo
ries above referred to, and examined parts of the Jura above
* See map, Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. xviii. pi. 18, p. 185.
CHAP. xv. DUE TO TERRESTRIAL GLACIERS. 303
Neufchatel in company with M. Desor, the country round
Soleure with Mr. Langen, the southern side of the great
strath near Lausanne with M. Morlot, the basin of the Aar,
around Berne, with M. Escher von der Linth ; and having
satisfied myself that all the facts which I saw north of the
Alps were in accordance with M. Guyot's views, I crossed to
the Italian side of the great chain, and became convinced
'that the same theory was equally applicable to the ancient
moraines of the plains of the Po.
M. Escher pointed out to me at Trogen in Appenzel, on
the left bank of the Ehine, fragments of a rock of a peculiar
mineralogical character, commonly called the granite of Pon-
telyas, the natural position of which is well known near
Trons, a hundred miles from Trogen, on the left bank of the
Ehine, about thirty miles from the source of that river. All
the blocks of this peculiar granite keep to the left bank, even
where the valley turns almost at right angles to its former
course near Mayenfeld below Chur, making a sharp bend,
resembling that of the valley of the Ehone at Martigny.
The granite blocks, where they are traced to the low country,
still keep to the left side of the Lake of Constance. That
they should not have crossed over to the opposite river-
bank below Chur is quite inexplicable, if, rejecting the aid
of land-ice, we appeal to floating ice as the transporting
power.
In M. Morlot's map, already cited, we behold between the
areas occupied by the glacial drift of the Ehine and Ehone
three smaller yet not inconsiderable spaces, distinguished by
distinct colours, indicating the peculiar detritus brought down
by the three great rivers, the Aar, Eeuss, and Limmat. The
ancient glacier of the first of these, the Aar, has traversed the
lakes of Brienz and Thun, and has borne angular, polished
and striated blocks of limestone and other rocks as far as
Berne, and somewhat below that city. The Eeuss has also
304 ANCIENT AND MODERN GLACIERS CONTRASTED. CHAP. xv.
stamped the lithological character of its own mountainous
region upon the lower part of its hydrographical basin by
covering it with its peculiar Alpine drift. In like manner the
old extinct glacier of the Limmat, during its gradual retreat,
has left monuments of its course in the Lake of Zurich in the
shape of terminal moraines, one of which has almost divided
that great sheet of water into two lakes.
The ice-work done by the extinct glaciers, as contrasted
with that performed by their dwarfed representatives of the
present day, is in due proportion to the relative volume of the
supposed glaciers, whether we measure them by the distances
to which they have carried erratic blocks, or the areas which
they have strewed over with drift, or the hard surfaces of rock
and number of boulders which they have polished and
striated. Instead of a length of five, ten, or twenty miles
and a thickness of 200, 300, or at the utmost 800 feet, those
giants of the olden time must have been from 50 to 150 miles
long, and between 1,000 and 3,000 feet deep. In like manner
the glaciation, although identical in kind, is on so small a
scale in the existing Alpine glaciers as at first sight to dis
appoint a Swedish, Scotch, Welsh or North American geolo-;
gist. When I visited the terminal moraine of the glacier of
the Khone in 1859, and tried to estimate the number of
angular or rounded pebbles and blocks which exhibited glacial
polishing or scratches as compared to those bearing no such
markings, I found that several thousand had to be reckoned
before I arrived at the first which was so striated or polished
as to differ from the stones of an ordinary torrent-bed. Even
in the moraines of the glaciers of Zermatt, Viesch, and others,
in which fragments of limestone and serpentine are abundant
(rocks which most readily receive and most faithfully retain
the signs of glaciation), I found, for one which displayed such
indications, several hundreds entirely free from them. Of
the most opposite character were the results obtained by me
CHAP. xv. EXTINCT GLACIERS OF ITALIAN ALPS. 305
from a similar scrutiny of the boulders and pebbles of the ter
minal moraine of one of the old extinct glaciers, namely, that
of the Eh one in the suburbs of Soleure. Thus at the point
K, in the map, fig. 42, p. 299, 1 observed a mass of unstratified
clay or mud, through which a variety of angular and rubbed
stones were scattered, and a marked proportion of the whole
were polished and scratched, and the clay rendered so com
pact, as if by the incumbent pressure of a great mass of ice,
that it has been found necessary to blow it up with gun
powder in making railway cuttings through part of it. A
marble rock of the age of our Portland stone, on which this
old moraine rests, has its surface polished like a looking-glass,
displaying beautiful sections of fossil shells of the genera
Nerinsea and Pteroceras, w r hile occasionally, besides finer
striae, there are deep rectilinear grooves, agreeing in direction
with the course in which the extinct glacier would have
moved according to the theory of M. Ghiyot, before explained.
Extinct Glaciers of the Italian Side of the Alps.
To select another example from the opposite or southern
side of the Alps. It will be seen in the elaborate map, re
cently executed by Signer Gabriel de Mortillet, of the
ancient glaciers of the Italian flank of the Alps, that the old
moraines descend in narrow strips from the snow-covered
ridges, through the principal valleys, to the great basin of the
Po, on reaching which they expand and cover large circular
or oval areas. Each of these groups of detritus is observed
(see map, p. 306) to contain exclusively the wreck of such
rocks as occur in situ on the Alpine heights of the hydro-
graphical basins to which the moraines respectively belong.
I had an opportunity of verifying this fact, in company with
Signer Gastaldi as my guide, by examining the erratics and
boulder formation between Susa and Turin, on the banks of
x
306
MORAINES OF EXTINCT GLACIERS
the Dora Riparia, which brings down the waters from Mont
Cenis, and from the Alps SW. of it. I there observed stria
ted fragments of dolomite and gypsum, which had come
Fig. 43
MAP OF THE MORAINES OF EXTINCT GLACIERS EXTENDING FEOM THE
ALPS INTO THE PLAINS OF THE PO NEAR TURIN.
From Map of the ancient Glaciers of the Italian side of the Alps by
Signor Gabriel de Mortillet.
A Crest or watershed of the Alps.
B Snow-covered Alpine summits which fed the ancient glaciers.
c Moraines of ancient or extinct glaciers.
CHAP. XV. IN THE PLAINS OF THE PO. 307
down from Mont Cenis, and had travelled as far as Avi-
gliana ; also masses of serpentine, brought from less remote
points, some of them apparently exceeding in dimensions
the largest erratics of Switzerland. I afterwards visited,
in company with Signori Grastaldi and Michellotti, a still
grander display of the work of a colossal glacier of the olden
time, twenty miles NE. of Turin, the moraine of which
descended from the two highest of the Alps, Mont Blanc
and Monte Rosa, and after passing through the valley of
Aosta, issued from a narrow defile above Ivrea (see map,
fig. 43). From this vomitory, the old glacier poured into
the plains of the Po that wonderful accumulation of mud,
gravel, boulders, and large erratics, which extend for fifteen
miles from above Ivrea to below Caluso, and which, when
seen in profile from Turin, have the aspect of a chain of
hills. In many countries, indeed, they might rank as an im
portant range of hills, for where they join the mountains they
are more than 1,500 feet high, and retain more than half that
height for a great part of their course, rising very abruptly
from the plain, often with a slope of from 20 to 30. This
glacial drift reposes near the mountains on ancient meta-
morphic rocks, and farther from them on marine pliocene
strata. Portions of the ridges of till and stratified matter
have been cut up into mounds and hillocks by the action of
the river, the Dora Baltea, and there are numerous lakes, so
that the entire moraine much resembles, except in its greater
height and width, the line of glacial drift of Perthshire and
Forfarshire, before described, p. 248. Its complicated struc
ture can only be explained by supposing that the ancient
glacier advanced and retreated several times, and left large
lateral moraines, the more modern mounds within the limits
of the older ones, and masses of till thrown down upon the
re-arranged and stratified materials of the first set of moraines.
Such appearances accord well with the hypothesis of the
x 2
308 CONTORTED DRIFT OF IVREA. CHAP. xv.
successive phases of glacial action in Switzerland, to which I
shall presently advert.
Contorted Strata of Glacial Drift south of Ivrea.
At Mazze near Caluso (see map, p. 306), the southern
extremity of this great moraine has recently been cut
through in making a tunnel for the railway which runs from
Turin to Ivrea. In the fine section thus exposed Signor
Grastaldi and I had an opportunity of observing the internal
structure of the glacial formation. In close juxtaposition to
a great mass of till with striated boulders, we saw stratified
beds of alternating gravel, sand, and loam, which were so
sharply bent that many of them had been twice pierced
through in the same vertical cutting. Whether they had
been thus folded by the mechanical power of an advancing
glacier, which had pushed before it a heap of stratified matter,
as the glacier of Zermatt has been sometimes known to shove
forward blocks of stone through the walls of houses, or
whether the melting of masses of ice, once interstratified with
sand and gravel, had given rise to flexures, in the manner
before suggested, pp. 138 and 220 ; it is at least satisfactory
to have detected this new proof of a close connection between
ice-action and contorted stratification, such as has been
described as so common in the Norfolk cliffs, p. 222, and
which is also very often seen in Scotland and North America,
where stratified gravel overlies till. I have little doubt that
if the marine pliocene strata, which underlie a great part of the
moraine below Ivrea, were exposed to view in a vertical section,
those fundamental strata would be found not to participate in
the least degree in the plications of the sands and gravels
of the overlying glacial drift.
To return to the marks of glaciation : in the moraine at
Mazze, there are many large blocks of protogene, and large
CHAP. XV. THEOKT OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE- BASINS. 309
and small ones of limestone and serpentine, which have been
brought down from Monte Kosa, through the gorge of Ivrea^
after having travelled for a distance of 100 miles. Confining
my attention to a part of the moraine, where pieces of lime
stone and serpentine were very numerous, I found that no less
than one-third of the whole number bore unequivocal signs
of glacial action ; a state of things which seems to bear some
relation to the vast volume and pressure of the ice which
once constituted the extinct glacier, and to the distance which
the stones had travelled. When I separated the pebbles of
quartz, which were never striated, and those of granite, mica
schist, and diorite, which do not often exhibit glacial mark
ings, and confined my attention to the serpentine alone, I
found no less than nineteen in twenty of the whole number
polished and scratched ; whereas in the terminal moraines of
some modern glaciers, where the materials have travelled not
more than ten or fifteen, instead of a hundred miles, scarce
one in twenty even of the serpentine pebbles exhibit glacial
polish and striation.
Theory of the Origin of Lake-basins by the erosive Action of
Glaciers, considered.
Geologists are all agreed, that the last series of movements
to which the Alps owe their present form and internal struc
ture, occurred after the deposition of the miocene strata ; and
it has been usual to refer the origin of the numerous lake-
basins of Alpine and sub-Alpine regions, both in Switzerland
and Northern Italy, to the same movements ; for it seemed
not unnatural to suppose, that forces capable of modifying
the configuration of the greatest European chain, by up
lifting some of its component tertiary strata (those of marine
origin of the miocene period) several thousand feet above
their former level, after throwing them into vertical and
310 THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE-BASINS CHAP. xv.
contorted positions, must also have given rise to many super
ficial inequalities, in some of which large bodies of water
would collect. M. Desor, in a memoir on the Swiss and
Italian lakes, suggested that they may have escaped being
obliterated by sedimentary deposition, by having been filled
with ice during the whole of the glacial period.
Subsequently to the retreat of the great glaciers, we know
that the lake-basins have been to a certain extent encroached
upon and turned into land by river deltas ; one of which, that
of the Rhone at the head of the lake of Geneva, is no less
than twelve miles long and several miles broad, besides
which there are many torrents on the borders of the same
lake, forming smaller deltas.
M. Gabriel de Mortillet, after a careful study of the glacial
formations of the Alps, agreed with his predecessors, that the
great lakes had existed before the glacial period, but came to
the opinion, in 1859, that they had all been first filled up
with alluvial matter, and then re-excavated by the action of
ice, which, during the epoch of intense cold, had by its
weight and force of propulsion, scooped out the loose and
incoherent alluvial strata, even where they had accumulated
to a thickness of 2,000 feet. Besides this erosion, the ice had
carried the whole mass of mud and stones up the inclined
planes, from the central depths to the lower outlets of the
lakes, and sometimes far beyond them. As some of these
rock-basins are 500, others more than 2,000 feet deep, having
their bottoms in some cases 500, in others 1,000 feet below
the level of the sea, and having areas from twenty to fifty
miles in length and from four to twelve in breadth, we may
well be startled at the boldness of this hypothesis.
The following are the facts and train of reasoning which
induced M. de Mortillet to embrace these views. At the
lower ends of the great Italian lakes, such as Maggiore, Como,
Garda and others, there are vast moraines which are proved
CHAP. XV. BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIERS. 311
by their contents to have come from the upper Alpine
valleys above the lakes. Such moraines often repose on an
older stratified alluvium, made up of rounded and worn
pebbles of precisely the same rocks as those forming the
moraines, but not derived from them, being small in size,
never angular, polished, or striated, and the whole having
evidently come from a great distance. These older alluvial
strata must, according to M. de Mortillet, be of pre-glacial
date, and could not have been carried past the sites of the
lakes, unless each basin had previously been filled and
levelled up with mud, sand, and gravel, so that the river
channel was continuous from the upper to the lower extremity
of each basin.
Professor Eamsay, after acquiring an intimate knowledge
of the glacial phenomena of the British Isles, had taught,
many years before, that small tarns and shallow rock-basins,
such as we see in many mountain regions, owe their origin
to glaciers which erode the softer rocks, leaving the harder
ones standing out in relief and comparatively unabraded.
Following up this idea after he had visited Switzerland, and
without any communication with M. de Mortillet or cog
nizance of his views, he suggested in 1859 that the lake-
basins were not of pre-glacial date, but had been scooped out
by ice during the glacial period, the excavation having for
the most part been effected in miocene sandstone, provincially
called, on account of its softness, 4 molasse.' By this theory
he dispensed with the necessity of filling up pre-existing
cavities with stratified alluvium, in the manner proposed by
M. de Mortillet.
I will now explain to what extent I agree with, and on what
points I feel compelled to differ from, the two distinguished
geologists above cited. 1st. It is no doubt true, as Professor
Eamsay remarks, that heavy masses of ice, creeping for ages
over a surface of dry land (whether this comprise hills,
312 THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE-BASINS CHAP. xv.
plateaus and valleys, as in the case of Greenland, before
described (p. 235), or be confined to the bottoms of great
valleys, as now in the higher Alps), must often, by their grind
ing action, produce depressions, in consequence of the different
degrees of resistance offered by rocks of unequal hardness.
Thus, for example, where quartzose beds of mica schist alternate
with clay-slate, or where trap-dykes, often causing waterfalls in
the courses of torrents, cut through sandstone or slate these
and innumerable other common associations of dissimilar
stony compounds, must give rise to a very unequal amount
of erosion, and consequently to lake-basins on a small scale.
But the larger the size of any lake, the more certain it will
be to contain within it rocks of every degree of hardness,
toughness, and softness ; and if we find a gradual deepening
from the head towards the central parts, and a shallowing
again from the middle to the lower end, as in several of the
great Swiss and Italian lakes, which are thirty or forty miles
in length, we require a power capable of acting with a con
siderable degree of uniformity on these masses of varying
powers of resistance.
2ndly. Several of the great lakes are by no means in the
line of direction which they ought to have taken had they
been scooped out by the pressure and onward movement of
the extinct glaciers. The Lake of Geneva, for instance, had
it been the work of ice, would have been prolonged from the
termination of the upper valley of the Ehone towards the
Jura, in the direction from F to a of the map, fig. 42,
p. 299, instead of running from F to I.
Srdly. It has been ascertained experimentally, that in a
glacier, as in a river, the rate of motion is accelerated or
lessened, according to the greater or less slope of the ground ;
also, that the lower strata of ice, like those of water, move
more slowly than those above them. In the Lago Maggiore,
which is more than 2,600 feet deep (797 metres), the ice,
CHAP. xv. BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIEES. 313
says Professor Kamsay, had to descend a slope of about 3
for the first twenty-five miles, and then to ascend for the
last twelve miles (from the deepest part towards the outlet),
at an angle of 5. It is for those who are conversant with
the dynamics of glacier motion to divine whether, in such a
case, the discharge of ice would not be entirely effected by
the superior and faster moving strata, and whether the
lowest would not be motionless or nearly so, and would
therefore exert very little, if any, friction on the bottom.
4thly. But the gravest objection to the hypothesis of
glacial erosion on so stupendous a scale is afforded by the
entire absence of lakes of the first magnitude in several areas
where they ought to exist if the enormous glaciers which
once occupied those spaces had possessed the deep excavating
power ascribed to them. Thus in the area laid down on
the map, p. 306, or that covered by the ancient moraine
of the Dora Baltea, we see the monuments of a colossal
glacier derived from Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, which
descended from points nearly a hundred miles distant, and
then emerging from the narrow gorge above Ivrea, deployed
upon the plains of the Po, advancing over a floor of marine
pliocene strata of no greater solidity than the miocene sand
stone and conglomerate in which the lake-basins of Geneva,
Zurich, and some others are situated. Why did this
glacier fail to scoop out a deep and wide basin rivalling in
size the lakes of Maggiore or Como, instead of merely giving
rise to a few ponds above Ivrea, which may have been due to
ice action? There is one lake, it is true that of Candia,
near the southern extremity of the moraine, which is larger ;
but even this, as will be seen by the map, p. 306, is quite of
subordinate importance, and whether it is situated in a rock
basin or is simply caused by a dam of moraine matter, has
not yet been fully made out.
There ought also to have been another great lake,
314 THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE-BASINS CHAP. xv.
according to the theory under consideration, in the space
now occupied by the moraine of the Dora Riparia, between
Susa and Turin (see map, p. 306). Signor Gastaldi has
shown that all the ponds in that area consist exclusively of
what M. de Mortillet has denominated morainic lakes,
i. e. caused by barriers of glacier-mud and stones.
5thly. In proof of the great lakes having had no existence
before the glacial period, Professor Eamsay observes that
we do not find in the Alps any freshwater strata of an age
intermediate between 'the close of the miocenic and the
commencement of the glacial epoch.'* But although such
formations are scarce, they are by no means wholly wanting ;
and if it can be shown that any one of the principal lakes^
that of Zurich for example, existed prior to the glacial era, it
will follow that in the Alps the erosive power of ice was not
required to produce lake-basins on a large scale. The deposits
alluded to on the borders of the lake of Zurich are those of
Utznach and Diirnten, situated each about 350 feet above
the present level of the lake, and containing valuable beds of
lignite.
The first of them, that of Utznach, is a delta formed at the
head of the ancient and once more extensive lake. The argil
laceous and lignite-bearing strata, more than 100 feet in
thickness, rest unconformably on highly inclined and sometimes
vertical miocene molasse. These clays are covered conform
ably by stratified sand and gravel sixty feet thick, partly con
solidated, in which the pebbles are of rocks belonging to the
upper valleys of the Limmat and its tributaries, all of them
small and not glacially striated, and wholly without admixture
of large angular stones. On the top of all repose very
large erratic blocks, affording clear evidence that the colossal
glacier which once filled the valley of the Limmat covered
* G-eol. Quart. Journ. vol. xviii.
CHAP. XV. BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIERS. 315
the old littoral deposit. The great age of the lignite is partly
indicated by the bones of Elephas antiquus found in it.
I visited Utznach in company with M. Escher von der
Linth in 1857, and during the same year examined the lignite
of Diirnten, many miles further down on the right bank of
the lake, in company with Professor Heer and Mr. Marcou.
The beds there are of the same age and within a few feet of
the same height above the level of the lake. They might easily
have been overlooked or confounded with the general glacial
drift of the neighbourhood, had not the bed of lignite, which
is from five to twelve feet thick, been worked for fuel, dur
ing which operation many organic remains came to light.
Among these are the teeth of Elephas antiquus, determined
by Dr. Falconer, and Rhinoceros leptorhinus? (R. megarhinus
Christol), the wild bull and red deer (Bos primigenius Boj.,
and Cervus Elaphus L.), the last two determined by Professor
Eiitemeyer. In the same beds I found many freshwater
shells of the genera Paludina y Limnea, &c., all of living
species. The plants named by Professor Heer are also
recent, and agree singularly with those of the Cromer buried
forest, before described (p. 214).
Among them are the Scotch and spruce firs, Pinus syl-
vestris and Pinus Abies, and the buckbean, or Menyanthes
trifoliata, &c., besides the common birch and other Eu
ropean plants.
Overlying this lignite are, first, as at Utznach, stratified
gravel, not of glacial origin, about thirty feet thick ; and,
secondly, highest of all, huge angular erratic blocks, clearly
indicating the presence of a great glacier, posterior in date
to all the organic remains above enumerated.
If any one of the existing Swiss lakes were now lowered by
deepening its outlet, or by raising the higher portion of it
relatively to the lower, we should see similar deltas of com
paratively modern date exposed to view, some of them with
316 THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE-BASINS CHAP. xv.
embedded trunks of pines of the same species drifted down
during freshets. Such deposits would be most frequent at
the upper ends of the lakes, but a few would occur on either
bank not far from the shore, where torrents once entered,
agreeing in geographical position with the lignite formations
of Utznach and Diirnten.
There are other freshwater formations with lignite, besides
those on the lake of Zurich, as those of Wetzikon, near the
Pfaffikon Lake, of Kaltbrunnen, of Buchberg, and that of
Morschweil between St. Grail and Rorschach, but none pro
bably older than the Diirnten beds. Like the buried forest
of Cromer (p. 214), they are all pre-glacial, yet they by
no means represent the older nor even the newer pliocene
period, but rather the beginning of the post-pliocene. It is
therefore true, as Professor Ramsay remarks, that, as yet, no
strata c of the age of the English Crag' have been detected in
any Alpine valley. In other words, there are no freshwater
formations yet known corresponding in date to the pliocene
beds of the upper Val d'Arno, above Florence a fact from
which we may infer (though with diffidence, as the inference
is based on negative evidence), that, although the great
Alpine valleys were eroded in pliocene times, the lake-basins
were, nevertheless, of post-pliocene date some of them
formed before, others during, the glacial epoch.
6th] y. In what manner, then, did the great lake basins ori
ginate if they were not hollowed out by ice ? My answer is,
they are all due to unequal movements of upheaval and sub
sidence. We have already seen that the buried forest of
Cromer, which, by its organic contents, seems clearly to be
of the same age as the lignite of Diirnten, was pre-glacial,
and that it has undergone a great oscillation of level (about
500 feet in both directions, see p. 227) since its origin,
having first sunk to that extent below the sea, and then
been raised up again to the sea-level. In the countless post-
CHAP. xv. BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIERS. .317
miocene ages which preceded the glacial period there was
ample time for the slow erosion by water of all the principal
hydrographical basins of the Alps, and the sites of all the
great lakes coincide, as Professor Eamsay truly says, with
these great lines of drainage. The lake-cavities do not lie in
synclinal troughs, following the strike and foldings of the
strata, but often, as the same geologist remarks, cross them
at high angles ; nor are they due to rents or gaping fissures,
although these, with other accidents connected with the
disturbing movements of the Alps, may sometimes have
determined originally the direction of the valleys. The
conformity of the lake-basins to the principal watercourses is
explicable if we assume them to have resulted from inequali
ties in the upward and downward movements of the whole
country in post-pliocene times, after the valleys were eroded.
We know that in Sweden the rate of the rise of the land
is far from uniform, being only a few inches in a century
near Stockholm, while north of it, and beyond Grefle, it
amounts to as many feet in the same number of years. Let
us suppose, with Charpentier, that the Alps gained in height
several thousand feet at the time when the intense cold of
the glacial period was coming on. This gradual rise would
be an era of aqueous erosion, and of the deepening, widening,
and lengthening of the valleys. It is very improbable that
the elevation would be everywhere identical in quantity, but
if it was never in excess in the outskirts as compared to the
central region or crest of the chain, it would not give rise to
lakes. When, however, the period of upheaval was followed
by one of gradual subsidence, the movement not being every
where strictly uniform, lake-basins would be formed where-
ever the rate of depression was in excess in the upper country.
Let the region, for example, near the head waters of the great
rivers sink at the rate of from four to six feet per century,
while only half as much subsidence occurs towards the cir-
313 THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF LAKE-BASINS CHAP. xv.
cumference of the mountains the rate diminishing about an
inch per mile, in a distance, say of forty miles this might
convert many of the largest and deepest valleys at their
lower ends into lakes.
We have no certainty that such movements may not now
be in progress in the Alps ; for if they are as slow as we have
assumed, they would be as insensible to the inhabitants, as
is the upheaval of Scandinavia or the subsidence of Green
land to the Swedes and Danes who dwell there. They only
know of the progress of such geographical revolutions, because
a slight change of level becomes manifest on the margin of
the sea. The lines of elevation or depression above supposed
might leave no clear geological traces of their action on the
high ridges and table-lands separating the valleys of the
principal rivers ; it is only when they cross such valleys, that
the disturbance caused in the course of thousands of years in
the drainage becomes apparent. If there were no ice, the
sinking of the land might not give rise to lakes. To accom
plish this in the absence of ice, it is necessary that the rate
of depression should be sufficiently fast to make it impossible
for the depositing power of the river to keep pace with it, or,
in other words, to fill up the incipient cavity, as fast as it
begins to form. Such levelling operations once complete,
the running water, aided by sand and pebbles, will gradually
cut a gorge through the newly raised rock, so as to prevent
it from forming a barrier. But if a great glacier fill the
lower part of the valley, aM the conditions of the problem
are altered. Instead of the mud, sand, and stones drifted
down from the higher regions being left behind in the
incipient basin, they all travel onwards in the shape of
moraines on the top of the ice, passing over and beyond the
new depression, so that when, at the end of fifty or a thousand
centuries, the glacier melts, a large and deep basin repre
senting the difference in the movement of two adjoining
CHAP. xv. BY THE EROSIVE ACTION OF GLACIERS. 319
mountain areas namely, the central and the circumferential
is for the first time rendered visible.
By adopting this hypothesis, we concede that there is an
intimate connection between the glacial period and a pre
dominance of lakes, in producing which the action of ice is
threefold ; first, by its direct power in scooping out shallow
basins where the rocks are of unequal hardness; an opera
tion which can by no means be confined to the land, for it
must extend to below the level of high water a thousand feet
and more, in such friths as have been described as filled with
ice in Greenland (see above, p. 236J.
2ndly. The ice will act indirectly by preventing cavities
caused by inequalities of subsidence or elevation from be
coming the receptacles first of water, and then of sediment,
by which the cavities would be levelled up and the lakes
obliterated.
Srdly. The ice is also an indirect cause of lakes, by heaping
up mounds of moraine matter, and thus giving rise to ponds
and even to sheets of water several miles in diameter.
The comparative scarcity, therefore, of lakes of post-pliocene
date in tropical countries, and very generally south of the
fortieth and fiftieth parallels of latitude, may be accounted for
by the absence of glacial action in such regions.
Post-glacial Lake-dwelling in the North of Italy.
We learn from M. de Mortillet that in the peat which has
filled up one of the ( morainic lakes ' formed by the ancient
glacier of the Ticino, M. Moro has discovered at Mercurago
the piles of a lake-dwelling like those of Switzerland, together
with various utensils, and a canoe hollowed out of the trunk
of a tree. From this fact we learn that south of the Alps, as
well as north of them, a primitive people having similar
habits flourished after the retreat of the great glaciers.
320 PHASES OF ALPINE GLACIAL ACTION.
Successive Phases of Glacial Action in the Alps, and their
Relation to the Human Period.
According to the geological observations of M. Morlot, the
following successive phases in the development of ice-action
in the Alps are plainly recognisable : -
1st. There was a period when the ice was in its greatest
excess, as described at p. 300 et seq., when the glacier of the
Rhone not only reached the Jura, but climbed to the height of
2,015 feet above the lake of Neufchatel, and 3,450 above the
sea, at which time the Alpine ice actually entered the French
territory at some points, penetrating by certain gorges, as
through the defile of the Fort de 1'Ecluse, among others.
2nd. To this succeeded a prolonged retreat of the great
glaciers, when they evacuated not only the Jura and the low
country between that chain and the Alps, but retired some
way back into the Alpine valleys. M. Morlot supposes their
diminution in volume to have accompanied a general sub
sidence of the country, to the extent of at least 1,000 feet.
The geological formations of the 2nd period consist of
stratified masses of sand and gravel, called the ' ancient
alluvium ' by MM. Necker and Favre, corresponding to the
( older or lower diluvium ' of some writers. Their origin is
evidently due to the action of rivers, swollen by the melting
of ice, by which the materials of parts of the old moraines
were rearranged and stratified, and left usually at considerable
heights above the level of the present valley plains.
3rd. The glaciers again advanced and became of gigantic
dimensions, though they fell far short of those of the first
period. That of the Rhone, for example, did not again reach
the Jura, though it filled the lake of Geneva, and formed
enormous moraines on its borders, and in many parts of the
valley between the Alps and Jura.
CHAP. xv. PHASES OF ALPINE GLACIAL ACTION. 321
4th. A second retreat of the glaciers took place when they
gradually shrank nearly into their present limits, accom
panied by another accumulation of stratified gravels, which
form in many places a series of terraces above the level of the
alluvial plains of the existing rivers.
In the gorge of the Dranse, near Thonon, M. Morlot dis
covered no less than three of these glacial formations in direct
superposition, namely, at the bottom of the section, a mass of
compact till or boulder-clay (No. 1) twelve feet thick, including
striated boulders of Alpine limestone, and covered by regularly
stratified ancient alluvium (No. 2) 150 feet thick, made up of
rounded pebbles in horizontal beds. This mass is in its turn
overlaid by a second formation (No. 3) of unstratified boulder
clay, with erratic blocks and striated pebbles, which consti
tuted the left lateral moraine of the great glacier of the
Khone, when it advanced for the second time to the lake of
Geneva. At a short distance from the above section, terraces
(No. 4) composed of stratified alluvium are seen at the heights
of 20, 50, 100, and 150 feet above the lake of Geneva, which,
by their position, can be shown to be posterior in date to
the upper boulder-clay, and therefore belong to the fourth
period, or that of the last retreat of the great glaciers. In
the deposits of this fourth period, the remains of the
mammoth have been discovered, as at Morges, for example,
on the lake of Geneva. The conical delta of the Tiniere,
mentioned at p. 27 as containing at different depths monu
ments of the Eoman as well as of the antecedent bronze and
stone ages, is the work of alluvial deposition going on when
the terrace of 50 feet was in progress. This modern delta
is supposed by M. Morlot to have required 10,000 years for
its accumulation. At the height of 150 feet above the lake,
following up the course of the same torrent, we came to a
more ancient delta, about ten times as large, which is there
fore supposed to be the monument of about ten times as
Y
322 SUCCESSION OF GLACIAL DEPOSITS. CHAP. xv.
many centuries, or 100,000 years, all referable to the fourth
period mentioned in the preceding page, or that which followed
the last retreat of the great glaciers.*
If the lower flattened cone of Tiniere be referred in great
part to the age of the oldest lake-dwellings, the higher one
might, perhaps, correspond with the post-pliocene period of
St. Acheul, or the era when man and the Elephas primige-
nius flourished together; but no human remains or works of
art have as yet been found in deposits of this age, or in
any alluvium containing the bones of extinct mammalia in
Switzerland.
Upon the whole, it is impossible not to be struck with an
apparent correspondence in the succession of events of the
glacial period of Switzerland, and that of the British Isles
before described. The time of the first Alpine glaciers of
colossal dimensions, when that chain perhaps was several
thousand feet higher than now, may have agreed with the
first continental period alluded to at pp. 241 and 282, when
Scotland was invested with a universal crust of ice. The re
treat of the first Alpine glaciers, caused partly by a lowering
of that chain, may have been synchronous with the period of
great submergence and floating ice in England. The second
advance of the glaciers may have coincided in date with the
re-elevation of the Alps, as well as of the Scotch and Welsh
mountains; and lastly, the final retreat of the Swiss and
Italian glaciers may have taken place when man and the
extinct mammalia were colonising the north-west of Europe,
and beginning to inhabit areas which had formed the bed of
the glacial sea during the era of chief submergence.
But it must be confessed, that in the present state of our
knowledge, these attempts to compare the chronological re
lations of the periods of upheaval and subsidence of areas so
* Morlot, Terrain quaternaire du Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles, No.
Bassin de Leman, Bulletin de Societ6 44.
CHAP. XV. COLD PEKIOD IN SICILY AND SYRIA. 323
widely separated as are the mountains of Scandinavia, the
British Isles, and the Alps, or the times of the advance and
retreat of glaciers in those several regions, and the greater
or less intensity of cold, must be looked upon as very con
jectural.
We may presume with more confidence that when the Alps
were highest and the Alpine glaciers most developed, filling
all the great lakes of northern Italy, and loading the plains
of Piedmont and Lombardy with ice, the waters of the Me
diterranean were chilled and of a lower average temperature
than now. Such a period of refrigeration is required by the
conchologist to account for the prevalence of northern shells
in the Sicilian seas about the close of the newer pliocene or
commencement of the post-pliocene period. For such shells
as Cyprina islandica, Natica clausa, and some others, enu
merated among the fossils of the latest tertiary formations
of Sicily by Philippi and Edward Forbes, point unequivocally
to a former more severe climate. Dr. Hooker also, in his
late journey to Syria (in the autumn of 1860), found the
moraines of extinct glaciers, on which the whole of the ancient
cedars of Lebanon grow, to descend 4,000 feet below the
summit of that chain. The temperature of Syria is now so
much milder, that there is no longer perpetual snow even on
the summit of Lebanon, the height of which was ascertained
to be 10,200 feet above the Mediterranean.*
Such monuments of a cold climate in latitudes so far south
as Syria and the north of Sicily, between 33 to 38 north,
may be confidently referred to an early part of the glacier
period, or to times long anterior to those of man and the ex
tinct mammalia of Abbeville and Amiens.
* Hooker, Natural History Keview, No. 5, January 1862, p. 11.
Y2
324 NATURE AND ORIGIN OF THE LOESS. CHAP. xvi.
CHAPTEK XVI.
HUMAN REMAINS IN THE LOESS, AND THEIR PROBABLE AGE.
NATURE, ORIGIN, AND AGE OF THE LOESS OF THE RHINE AND
DANUBE IMPALPABLE MUD PRODUCED BY THE GRINDING ACTION OF
GLACIERS DISPERSION OF THIS MUD AT THE PERIOD OF THE RETREAT
OF THE "GREAT ALPINE GLACIERS CONTINUITY OF THE LOESS FROM
SWITZERLAND TO THE LOW COUNTRIES CHARACTERISTIC ORGANIC
REMAINS NOT LACUSTRINE ALPINE GRAVEL IN THE VALLEY OF THE
RHINE COVERED BY LOESS GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE
LOESS AND ITS HEIGHT ABOVE THE SEA FOSSIL MAMMALIA LOESS OF
THE DANUBE OSCILLATIONS IN THE LEVEL OF THE ALPS AND LOWER
COUNTRY REQUIRED TO EXPLAIN THE FORMATION AND DENUDATION
OF THE LOESS MORE RAPID MOVEMENT OF THE INLAND COUNTRY
THE SAME DEPRESSION AND UPHEAVAL MIGHT ACCOUNT FOR THE
ADVANCE AND RETREAT OF THE ALPINE GLACIERS HIMALAYAN MUD
OP THE PLAINS OF THE GANGES COMPARED TO EUROPEAN LOESS
HUMAN REMAINS IN LOESS NEAR MAESTRICHT, AND THEIR PROBABLE
ANTIQUITY.
Nature and Origin of the Loess.
TNTIMATELY connected with the subjects treated of in
J- the last chapter, is the nature, origin, and age of cer
tain loamy deposits, commonly called loess, which form a
marked feature in the superficial deposits of the basins of the
Rhine, Danube, and some other large rivers draining the Alps,
and which extend down the Rhine into the Low Countries,
and were once perhaps continuous with others of like com
position in the north of France,
It has been reported of late years that human remains
have been detected at several points in the loess of the
Meuse around and below Maestricht. I have visited the
localities referred to ; but, before giving an account of
them, it will be desirable to explain what is meant by the
CHAP. xvi. MUD PEODUCED BY GLACIEES. 325
loess, a step the more necessary, as a French geologist, for
whose knowledge and judgment I have great respect, tells
me he has come to the conclusion that ' the loess ' is ( a myth,'
having no real existence in a geological sense, or as holding
a definite place in the chronological series.
No doubt it is true that in every country, and at all
geological periods, rivers have been depositing fine loam on
their inundated plains in the manner explained above at
p. 34, where the Nile mud was spoken of. This mud of the
plains of Egypt, according to Professor BischofT's chemical
analysis, agrees closely in composition with the loess of the
Bhine.* I have also shown (p. 201), when speaking of the
fossil man of Natchez, how identical in mineral character, and
in the genera of its terrestrial and amphibious shells, is the
ancient fluviatile loam of the Mississippi with the loess of the
Ehine. But granting that loam presenting the same aspect has
originated at different times and in distinct hydrographical
basins, it is nevertheless true that, during the glacial period,
the Alps were a great centre of dispersion, not only of erratics,
as we have seen in the last chapter, and of gravel, which was
carried farther than the erratics, but also of very fine mud,
which was transported to still greater distances and in
greater volume down the principal river-courses between the
mountains and the sea.
Mud produced by Glaciers.
They who have visited Switzerland are aware that every
torrent which issues from an icy cavern at the extremity of a
glacier is densely charged with an impalpable powder, pro
duced by the grinding action to which the subjacent floor of
rock and the stones and sand frozen into the ice are exposed
in the manner before described. We may therefore readily
* Chemical and Physical Geology, yol. i. p. 132.
326 FOSSIL SHELLS OF THE LOESS. CHAP. XVI.
conceive that a much greater volume of fine sediment was
swept along by rivers swollen by melting ice at the time of
the retreat of the gigantic glaciers of the olden time. The
fact that a large proportion of this mud, instead of being
carried to the ocean, where it might have formed a delta on
the coast, or have been dispersed far and wide by the tides
and currents, has accumulated in inland valleys, will be found
to be an additional proof of the former occurrence of those
grand oscillations in the level of the Alps and parts of the
adjoining continent which were required to explain the
alternate advance and retreat of the glaciers, and the super
position of more than one boulder clay and stratified alluvium
before mentioned, p. 321.
The position of the loess between Basle and Bonn is such
as to imply that the great valley of the Ehine had already
acquired its present shape, and in some places, perhaps more
than its actual depth and width, previously to the time when
it was gradually filled up to a great extent with fine loam.
The greater part of this loam has been since removed, so that
a fringe only of the deposit is now left on the flanks of the
boundary hills, or occasionally some outliers in the middle of
the great plain of the .Ehine where it expands in width.
These outliers are sometimes on such a scale as to admit of
minor hills and valleys, having been shaped out of them by
the action of rain and small streamlets, as near Freiburg in
the Brisgau and other districts.
Fossil Shells of the Loess.
The loess is generally devoid of fossils, although in many
places they are abundant, consisting of land-shells, all of
living species, and comprising no small part of the entire
molluscous fauna now inhabiting the same region. The
three shells most frequently met with are those represented in
CHAP. XVI. FOSSIL SHELLS OF THE LOESS. 327
the annexed figures. The slug, called Succinea, is not strictly
aquatic, but lives in damp places, and may be seen in full
activity far from rivers, in meadows, where the grass is wet
with rain or dew ; but shells of the genera Limnea, Planorbis,
Paludina, Cyclas, and others, requiring to be constantly in the
water, are extremely exceptional in the loess, occurring only
at the bottom of the deposit, where it begins to alternate with
ancient river-gravel, on which it usually reposes.
This underlying gravel consists, in the valley of the Khine,
Fig. 44 Fig. 45 Fig. 46
4-4-*
Succinea elongata. 'Pupa muscorum. Helix hispida Lin. ; H. plebeium Jeffreys.
for the most part, of pebbles and boulders of Alpine origin,
showing that there was a time when the rivers had power to
convey coarse materials for hundreds of miles northwards
from Switzerland, towards the sea ; whereas, at a later period,
an entire change was brought about in the physical geography
of the same district, so that the same river deposited nothing
but fine mud, which accumulated to a thickness of 800 feet
or more above the original alluvial plain.
But although most of the fundamental gravel was derived
from the Alps, there has been observed in the neighbourhood
of the principal mountain chains bordering the great valley,
such as the Black Forest, Vosges, and Odenwald, an ad
mixture of detritus characteristic of those several chains.
We cannot doubt, therefore, that as some of these mountains,
especially the Vosges, had, during the glacial period, their
own glaciers, a part of the fine mud of their moraines must
have been mingled with loess of Alpine origin ; although the
principal mass of the latter must have come from Switzerland,
and can in fact be traced continuously from Basle to Belgium.
328 GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE LOESS. CHAP. xvr.
Geographical Distribution of the Loess.
It was stated in the last chapter, p. 302, that at the time of
the greatest extension of the Swiss glaciers, the Lake of
Constance, and all the other great lakes, were filled with ice,
so that gravel and mud could pass freely from the upper
Alpine valley of the Rhine, to the lower region between Basle
and the sea, the great lake intercepting no part of the
moraines, whether fine or coarse. On the other hand, the Aar,
with its great tributaries the Limmat and the Eeuss, does not
join the Rhine till after it issues from the Lake of Constance ;
and by their channels a large part of the Alpine gravel and
mud could always have passed without obstruction into the
lower country, even after the ice of the great lake had melted.
It will give the reader some idea of the manner in which
the Rhenish loess occurs, if he is told that some of the earlier
scientific observers imagined it to have been formed in a vast
lake which occupied the valley of the Rhine from Basle to
Mayence, sending up arms or branches into what are now the
valleys of the Main, Necker, and other large rivers. They
placed the barrier of this imaginary lake in the narrow and
picturesque gorge of the Rhine between Bingen and Bonn :
and when it was objected that the lateral valley of the Lahn,
communicating with that gorge, had also been filled with loess,
they were compelled to transfer the great dam farther down, and
to place it below Bonn. Strictly speaking, it must be placed
much farther north, or in the 51st parallel of latitude, where
the limits of the loess have been traced out by MM. Omalius
D'Halloy, Dumont, and others, running east and west by
Cologne, Juliers, Louvain, Oudenarde, and Courtray, in
Belgium, to Cassel, near Dunkirk, in France. This boundary
line may not indicate the original seaward extent of the
formation, as it may have stretched still farther north, and its
present abrupt termination may only show how far it was
CHAP. XVI. GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE LOESS. 329
cut back at some former period by the denuding action of
the sea.
Even if the imbedded fossil shells of the loess had
been lacustrine, instead of being, as we have seen, terrestrial
and amphibious, the vast height and width of the required
barrier would have been fatal to the theory of a lake : for the
loess is met with in great force at an elevation of no less than
1,600 feet above the sea, covering the Kaiserstuhl, a volcanic
mountain which stands in the jniddle of the great valley of the
Rhine, near Freiburg in Brisgau. The extent to which the
valley has there been the receptacle of fine mud afterwards
removed is most remarkable.
The loess of Belgium was called ' Hesbayan mud ' in the
geological map of the late M. Dumont, who, I am told,
recognised it as being in great part composed of Alpine mud.
M. d'Archiac, when speaking of the loess, observes that it en
velopes Hainault, Brabant, and Limburg like a mantle,
everywhere uniform and homogeneous in character, filling up
the lower depressions of the Ardennes, and passing thence
into the north of France, though not crossing into England.
In France, he adds, it is found on high plateaus, 600 feet
above some of the rivers, such as the Marne ; but as we go
southwards and eastwards of the basin of the Seine, it dimi
nishes in quantity, and finally thins out in those directions.*
It may even be a question whether the f limon des plateaux,'
or upland loam of the Somme valley, before alluded to, f may
not be a part of the same formation. As to the higher and
lower level gravels of that valley, which, like that of the Seine,
contain no foreign rocks,! we have seen that they are each of
them covered by deposits of loess or inundation-mud belong
ing respectively to the periods of the gravels, whereas the
upland loam is of much older date, more widely spread, and
* D'Archiac, Histoire des Progres, vol. ii. pp. 169, 170,
f No. 4, fig. 7, p. 103. | See above, p. 133. .
330 THE LOESS IN BELGIUM. CHAP. xvi.
occupying positions often independent of the present lines of
drainage. To restore in imagination the geographical outline
of Picardy, to which rivers charged with so much homogeneous
loam, and running at such heights, may once have belonged,
is now impossible.
In the valley of the Ehine, as I before observed, the main
body of the loess, instead of having been formed at succes
sively lower and lower levels as in the case of the basin of the
Somme, was deposited in a wide and deep preexisting basin,
or strath, bounded by lofty mountain chains, such as the Black
Forest, Vosges, and Odenwald. In some places the loam
accumulated to such a depth as first to fill the valley and
then to spread over the adjoining table-lands, as in the case
of the Lower Eifel, where it encircled some of the modern
volcanic cones of loose pumice and ashes. In these in
stances it does not appear to me that the volcanoes were in
eruption during the time of the deposition of the loess, as
some geologists have supposed. The interstrtaification of
loam and volcanic ejectamenta was probably occasioned by
the fluviatile mud having gradually enveloped the cones of
loose scoriae after they were completely formed. I am the
more inclined to embrace this view after having seen the
junction of granite and loess on the steep slopes of some of
the mountains bounding the great plain of the Ehine on its
right bank in the Berg-strasse. Thus between Darmstadt
and Heidelberg perpendicular sections are seen of loess 200
feet thick, at various heights above the river, some of them
at elevations of 800 feet and upwards. In one of these may
be seen, resting on the hill side of Melibocus in the Odenwald,
the usual yellow loam free from pebbles at its contact with a
steep slope of granite, but divided into horizontal layers for a
short distance from the line of junction. In these layers,
which abut against the granite, a mixture of mica and of
unrounded grains of quartz and felspar occur, evidently
CHAP. xvi. THE LOESS IN BELGIUM. 331
derived from the disintegration of the crystalline rock, which
must have decomposed in the atmosphere before the mud
had reached this height. Entire shells of Helix, Pupa, and
Sucrinea, of the usual living species, are embedded in the
granitic mixture. We may therefore be sure that the valley
bounded by steep hills of granite existed before the tranquil
accumulation of this vast body of loess.
During the re-excavation of the basin of the Ehine succes
sive deposits of loess of newer origin were formed at various
heights ; and it is often difficult to distinguish their relative
ages, especially as fossils are often entirely wanting, and the
mineral composition of the formation is so uniform.
The loess in Belgium is variable in thickness, usually
ranging from ten to thirty feet. It caps some of the highest
hills or table-land around Brussels at the height of 300 feet
above the sea. In such places it usually rests on gravel, and
rarely contains shells, but when they occur, they are of recent
species. I found the Succinea oblonga, before mentioned,
p. 327, and Helix hispida in the Belgian loess at JSTeerepen,
between Tongres and Hasselt, where M. Bosquet had pre
viously obtained remains of an elephant referred to E. primi-
genius. This pachyderm and Rhinoceros tichorhinus are
cited as characterising the loess in various parts of the valley
of the Rhine. Several perfect skeletons of the marmot have
been disinterred from the loess of Aix-la-Chapelle. But
much remains to be done in determining the species of mam
malia of this formation, and the relative altitudes above the
valley-plain at which they occur.
If we ascend the basin of the Neckar, we find that it is
filled with loess of great thickness, far above its junction with
the Rhine. At Canstadt near Stuttgart, loess resembling
that of the Rhine contains many fossil bones, especially those
of Elephas primigenius, together with some of Rhinoceros
tichorhinus, the species having been lately determined by
332 LOESS IN BASINS OF THE NECKAK AND DANUBE. CHAP. xvi.
Dr. Falconer. At this place the loess is covered by a thick
bed of travertin, used as a building stone, the product of a
mineral spring. In the travertin are many fossil plants, all
recent except two, an oak and poplar, the leaves of which
Professor Heer has not been able to identify with any known
species.
Below the loess of Canstadt, in which bones of the mam
moth are so abundant, is a bed of gravel, evidently an old
river channel, now many feet above the level of the Neckar,
the valley having there been excavated to some depth below
its ancient channel so as to lie in the underlying red sand
stone or keuper. Although the loess, when traced from the
valley of the Rhine into that of the Neckar, or into any
other of its tributaries, often undergoes some slight alteration
in its character, yet there is so much identity of composition
as to suggest the idea, that the mud of the main river passed
far up the tributary valleys, just as that of the Mississippi,
during floods, flows far up the Ohio, carrying its mud with it
into the basin of that river. But the uniformity of colour
and mineral composition does not extend indefinitely into
the higher parts of every basin. In that of the Neckar, for
example, near Tubingen, I , found the fluviatile loam or
brick-earth, enclosing the usual helices and succinese, to
gether with the bones of the mammoth, very distinct in
colour and composition from ordinary Rhenish loess, and
such as no one could confound with Alpine mud. It is
mottled with red and green, like the New Red Sandstone or
keuper, from which it has clearly been derived.
Such examples, however, merely show that where a basin
is so limited in size that the detritus is derived chiefly, or
exclusively, from one formation, the prevailing rock will
impart its colour and composition in a very decided manner
to the loam ; whereas, in the basin of a great river which has
many tributaries, the loam will consist of a mixture of
CHAP. xvi. THE POSITION OF THE LOESS. 333
almost every variety of rock, and will therefore exhibit an
average result nearly the same in all countries. Thus, the
loam which fills to a great depth the wide Valley of the
Saone, which is bounded on the west side by an escarpment
of inferior oolite, and by the chain of the Jura on the east, is
very like the loess found in the continuation of the same
great basin after the junction of the Ehone, by which a
large supply of Alpine mud has been added and intermixed.
In the higher parts of the basin of the Danube, loess of the
same character as that of the Khine, and which I believe to be
equally of Alpine origin, attains a far greater elevation above
the sea than any deposits of Ehenish loess. Mr. Stur informs
me that it also fills the valleys of the Carpathians, almost to
the height of the watershed between Austria and Hungary.
Oscillations of Level required to explain the Accumulation
and Denudation of the Loess.
A theory, therefore, which attempts to account for the
position of the loess cannot be satisfactory unless it be
equally applicable to the basins of the Khine and Danube.
So far as relates to the source of so much homogeneous loam,
there are many large tributaries of the Danube which, during
the glacial period, may have carried an ample supply of
moraine-mud from the Alps to that river ; and in regard to
grand oscillations in the level of the land, it is obvious that
the same movements, both downward and upward, of the
great mountain- chain would be attended with analogous
effects, whether the great rivers flowed northwards or east
wards. In each case fine loam would be accumulated during
subsidence, and removed during the upheaval of the land.
Changes, therefore, of level, analogous to those on which we
have been led to speculate when endeavouring to solve the
various problems presented by the glacial phenomena, are
334 THE POSITION OF THE LOESS. CHAP. xvi.
equally available to account for the nature and geological
distribution of the loess. But we must suppose that the
amount of depression and re-elevation in the central region
was considerably in excess of that experienced in the lower
countries, or those nearer the sea, and that the rate of sub
sidence in the latter was never so considerable as to cause
submergence, or the admission of the sea into the interior of
the continent by the valleys of the principal rivers.
We have already assumed that the Alps were loftier than
now, when they were the source of those gigantic glaciers
which reached the flanks of the Jura. At that time gravel was
borne to the greatest distances from the central mountains
through the main valleys, which had a somewhat steeper slope
than now, and the quantity of river-ice must at that time
have aided in the transportation of pebbles and boulders.
To this state of things gradually succeeded another of an
opposite character, when the fall of the rivers from the
mountains to the sea became less and less, while the Alps
were slowly sinking, and the first retreat of the great glaciers
was taking place. Suppose the depression to have been at
the rate of five feet in a century in the mountains, and only
as many inches in the same time nearer the coast, still, in
such areas as the eye could survey at once, comprising a
small part only of Switzerland or of the basin of the Ehine,
the movement might appear to be uniform, and the pre
existing valleys and heights might seem to remain relatively
to each other as before.
Such inequality in the rate of rising or sinking, when we
contemplate large continental spaces, is quite consistent with
what we know of the course of nature in our own times, as
well as at remote geological epochs. Thus, in Sweden, as
before stated, the rise of land now in progress is nearly uni
form, as we proceed from north to south, for moderate distances;
but it greatly diminishes southwards if we compare areas
CHAP. xvi. OSCILLATIONS OF LEYEL. 335
hundreds of miles apart ; so that, instead of the land subsiding
five feet in a hundred years, as at the North Cape, it becomes
less than the same number of inches at Stockholm, and
farther south the land is stationary, or, if not, seems rather
to be descending than ascending.*
To cite an example of high geological antiquity, M. Hebert
has demonstrated that, during the oolitic and cretaceous
periods, similar inequalities in the vertical movements of
the earth's crust took place in Switzerland and France. By
his own observations and those of M. Lory he has proved
that the area of the Alps was rising and emerging from
beneath the ocean towards the close of the oolitic epoch, and
was above water at the commencement of the cretaceous era ;
while, on the other hand, the area of the Jura, about one hun
dred miles to the north, was slowly sinking at the close of the
oolitic period, and had become submerged at the commence
ment of the cretaceous. Yet these oscillations of level were
accomplished without any perceptible derangement in the
strata, which remained all the while horizontal, so that the
lower cretaceous or neocomian beds were deposited conform
ably on the oolitic.f
Taking for granted then that the depression was more
rapid in the more elevated region, the great rivers would lose,
century after century, some portion of their velocity or
carrying power, and would leave behind them on their
alluvial plains more and more of the moraine-mud with
which they were charged, till at length, in the course of
thousands or some tens of thousands of years, a large part of
the main valleys would begin to resemble the plains of Egypt,
where nothing but mud is deposited during the flood season.
The thickness of loam containing shells of land and am-
* Principles of Geology, chap. xxx. de France, 2 series, torn. xvi. p. 596,
9th ed. p. 519 et seq. 1859.
f Bulletin de la Societe Greologique
336 GANGETIC MUD AND EUROPEAN LOESS. CHAP. xvi.
phibious mollusca might in this way accumulate to any
extent, so that the waters might overflow some of the heights
originally bounding the valley, and deposits of 'platform
mud,' as it has been termed in France, might be extensively
formed. At length, whenever a re-elevation of the Alps at
the time of the second extension of the glaciers took place,
there would be renewed denudation and removal of such loess ;
and if, as some geologists believe, there has been more than
one oscillation of level in the Alps since the commencement
of the glacial period, the changes would be proportionally
more complicated, and terraces of gravel covered with loess
might be formed at different heights, and at different periods.
Himalayan Mud of the Ganges compared to European
Loess.
Some of the revolutions in physical geography above sug
gested for the continent of Europe during the post-pliocene
epoch, may have had their counterparts in India in the recent
period. The vast plains of Bengal are overspread with Hima
layan mud, which, as we ascend the Granges, extends inland
for 1,200 miles from the sea, continuing very homogeneous on
the whole, though becoming more sandy as it nears the hills.
They who sail down the river during a season of inundation
see nothing but a sheet of water in every direction, except
here and there where the tops of trees emerge above its level.
To what depth the mud extends is not known, but it resem
bles the loess in being generally devoid of stratification, and
of shells, though containing occasionally land shells in abun
dance, as well as calcareous concretions, called kunkur, which
may be compared to the nodules of carbonate of lime some
times observed to form layers in the Ehenish loess. I am
told by Colonel Strachey and Dr. Hooker, that below Cal
cutta, when the flood subsides, the Gangetic mud may be seen
CHAP. xvi. GANaETIC MUD AND EUKOPEAN LOESS. 337
in river cliffs eighty feet high, in which they were unable to
detect organic remains, a remark which I found to hold
equally in regard to the recent mud of the Mississippi.
Dr. Wallich, while confirming these observations, informs me
that at certain points in Bengal, farther inland, he met with
land-shells in the banks of the great river. Borings have
been made at Calcutta, beginning not many feet above the
sea-level to the depth of 300 and 400 feet ; and wherever or
ganic remains were found in the strata pierced through, they
were of a fluviatile or terrestrial character, implying, that
during a long and gradual subsidence of the country, the
sediment thrown down by the Granges and Burrampooter
had accumulated at a sufficient rate to prevent the sea from
invading that region.
At the bottom of the borings, after passing through much
fine loam, beds of pebbles, sand, and boulders were reached,
such as might belong to an ancient river channel ; and the
bones of a crocodile, and the shell of a freshwater tortoise
imbedded in it, were met with, at the depth of four hundred
feet from the surface. No pebbles are now brought down
within a great distance of this point, so that the country
must once have had a totally different character, and may
have had its valleys, hills, and rivers, before all was reduced
to one common level by the accumulation upon it of fine
Himalayan mud. If the latter were removed during a
gradual re-elevation of the country, many old hydrographical
basins might reappear, and portions of the loam might alone
remain in terraces, on the flanks of hills, or on platforms, at
testing the vast extent, in ancient times, of the muddy enve
lope. A similar succession of events has, in all likelihood,
occurred in Europe during the deposition and denudation of
the loess of the post-pliocene period, which, as we have seen
in a former chapter, was long enough to allow of the gradual
development of almost any amount of such physical changes.
338 HUMAN REMAINS NEAR MAESTRICHT. CHAP, xvi
Human Remains in Loess near Maestricht.
The banks of the Meuse at Maestricht, like those of the
Rhine at Bonn and Cologne, are slightly elevated above the
level of the alluvial plain. On the right bank of the Meuse,
opposite Maestricht, the difference of level is so marked, that
a bridge, with many arches, has been constructed to keep up,
during the flood season, a communication between the higher
parts of the alluvial plain, and the hills or bluffs which
bound it. This plain is composed of modern loess, undistin-
guishable in mineral character from that of higher antiquity,
before alluded to, and entirely without signs of successive
deposition, and devoid of terrestrial or fluviatile shells. It
is extensively worked for brick-earth to the depth of about
eight feet. The bluffs before alluded to often consist of a
terrace of gravel, from thirty to forty feet in thickness, covered
by an older loess, which is continuous as we ascend the valley
to Liege. In the suburbs of that city, patches of loess are
seen at the height of two hundred feet above the level of
the Meuse. The table-land in that region, composed of Car
boniferous and Devonian rocks, is about four hundred and
fifty feet high, and is not overspread with loess.
A terrace of gravel covered with loess has been mentioned
as existing on the right bank of the Meuse at Maestricht.
Answering to it another is also seen on the left bank below
that city, and a promontory of it projecting into the alluvial
plain of the Meuse, and approaching to within a hundred yards
of the river, was cut through during the excavation of a canal
running from Maestricht to Hocht, between the years 1815
and 1823. This section occurs at the village of Smeermass,
and is about sixty feet deep, the lower forty feet consisting of
stratified gravel, and the upper of twenty feet of loess. The
number of molars, tusks, and bones (probably parts of entire
CBAP. XVI. HUMAN REMAINS NEAR MAESTRICHT. 33<J
skeletons) of elephants obtained during these diggings, was
extraordinary. Not a few of them are still preserved in the
museums of Maestricht and Leyden, together with some
horns of deer, bones of the ox-tribe and other mammalia,
and a human lower jaw, with teeth. According to Professor
Crahay, who published an account of it at the time, this jaw,
which is now preserved at Leyden, was found at the depth of
nineteen feet from the surface, where the loess joins the under
lying gravel, in a stratum of sandy loam resting on gravel,
and overlaid by some pebbly and sandy beds. The stratum
is said to have been intact and undisturbed, but the human
jaw was isolated, the nearest tusk of an elephant being six
yards removed from it in horizontal distance.
Most of the other mammalian bones were found, like these
human remains, in or near the gravel, but some of the tusks
and teeth of elephants were met with much nearer the sur
face. I visited the site of these fossils in 1860, in company
with M. van Binkhorst, and we found the description of the
ground, published by the late Professor Crahay of Louvain,
to be very correct.* The projecting portion of the terrace,
which was cut through in making the canal, is called the hill
of Caberg, which is flat-topped, sixty feet high, and has a
steep slope on both sides towards the alluvial plain. M. van
Binkhorst (who is the author of some valuable works on the
paleontology of the Maestricht chalk) has recently visited
Leyden, and ascertained that the human fossil above mentioned
is still entire in the museum of the university. Although
we had no opportunity of verifying the authenticity of
Professor Crahay's statements, we could see no reason for
suspecting the human jaw to belong to a different geological
period from that of the extinct elephant. If this were
* M. van Binkhorst has shown me moir was published in 1836 in the
the original MS. read to the Maes- Bulletin de 1' Academic Koyale de
tricht Athenseum in 1823. The me- Belgique, torn. iii. p. 43.
Z 2
340 HUMAN REMAINS NEAR MAESTRICHT. CHAP. xvr.
granted, it might have no claims to a higher antiquity than
the human remains which Dr. Schmerling disentombed from
the Belgian caverns ; but the fact of their occurring in a
post-pliocene alluvial deposit in the open plains, would be
the first example of such a phenomenon. The top of the hill
of Caberg is not so high above the Meuse as is the terrace of
St. Acheul, with its flint implements above the Somme, but
at St. Acheul no human bones have yet been detected.
In the museum at Maestricht are preserved a human
frontal and a pelvic bone, stained of a dark peaty colour ;
the frontal very remarkable for its lowness, and the promi
nence of the superciliary ridges, which resemble those of the
Borreby skull, figured at p. 86. These remains may be the
same as those alluded to by Professor Crahay in his memoir,
where he says, that in a deposit in the suburbs of Hocht of a
black colour, were found leaves, nuts, and freshwater shells
in a very perfect state, and a human skull of a dark colour.
They were of an age long posterior to that of the loess con
taining the bones of elephants, and in which the human jaw
now at Leyden is said to have been embedded.
As to the human skeleton, alleged to have been found in
ancient loess at the village of Keer on the right bank of the
Meuse, opposite Maestricht, I explored the locality in com
pany with M. Bosquet, and we satisfied ourselves that the
proofs advanced in support of its antiquity cannot be de
pended upon.
CHAP. xvii. POST-GLACIAL DISLOCATIONS. 341
CHAPTER XVII.
POST-GLACIAL DISLOCATIONS AND FOLDINGS OF CRETACEOUS AND
DRIFT STRATA IN THE ISLAND OF MOEN, IN DENMARK.
GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURES OF THE ISLAND OF MOEN GREAT DIS
TURBANCES OF THE CHALK POSTERIOR IN DATE TO THE GLACIAL
DRIFT, WITH RECENT SHELLS M. PUGGAARD's SECTIONS OF THE CLIFFS
OF MOEN FLEXURES AND FAULTS COMMON TO THE CHALK AND
GLACIAL DRIFT DIFFERENT DIRECTION OF THE LINES OF SUCCESSIVE
MOVEMENT, FRACTURE, AND FLEXURE UNDISTURBED CONDITION OF
THE ROCKS IN THE ADJOINING DANISH ISLANDS UNEQUAL MOVEMENT^
OF UPHEAVAL IN FINMARK EARTHQUAKE OF NEW ZEALAND IN 1855
PREDOMINANCE IN ALL AGES OF UNIFORM CONTINENTAL MOVEMENTS
OVER. THOSE BY WHICH THE ROCKS ARE LOCALLY CONVULSED.
IN the preceding chapters I have endeavoured to show that
the study of the successive phases of the glacial period
in Europe, and the enduring marks which they have left on
many of the solid rocks and on the character of the super
ficial drift, are of great assistance in enabling us to appreciate
the vast lapse of ages which are comprised in the post-
pliocene epoch. They enlarge at the same time our concep
tion of the antiquity, not only of the living species of animals
and plants, but of their present geographical distribution,
and throw light on the chronological relations of these spe
cies to the earliest date yet ascertained for the existence of
the human race. That date, it will be seen, is very remote if
compared to the times of history and tradition, yet very
modern if contrasted with the length of time during which
all the living testacea, and even many of the mammalia, have
inhabited the globe.
In order to render my account of the phenomena of the
342 FOLDINGS OF STEATA CHAP. xvn.
glacial epoch more complete, I shall describe in this chapter
some other changes in physical geography, and in the in
ternal structure of the earth's crust, which" have happened
in the post-pliocene period, because they differ in kind from
any previously alluded to, and are of a class which were
thought by the earlier geologists to belong exclusively to
epochs anterior to the origin of the existing fauna and flora.
Of this nature are those faults and violent local dislocations
of the rocks, and those sharp bendings and foldings of the
strata, which we so often behold in mountain chains, and
sometimes in low countries also, especially where the rock-
formations are of ancient date.
Post-glacial Dislocations and Foldings of cretaceous and
drift Strata in the Island of Moen, Denmark
A striking illustration of such convulsions of post-pliocene
date may be seen in the Danish island of Moen, which
is situated about fifty miles south of Copenhagen. The
island is about sixty miles in circumference, and consists of
white chalk, several hundred feet thick, overlaid by boulder
clay and sand, or glacial drift which is made up of several
subdivisions, some unstratified and others stratified, the whole
having a mean thickness of sixty feet, but sometimes attain
ing nearly twice that thickness. In one of the oldest members
of the formation, fossil marine-shells of existing species have
been found.
Throughout the greater part of Moen, the strata of the
drift are undisturbed and horizontal, as are those of the
subjacent chalk ; but on the north-eastern coast they have
been, throughout a certain area, bent, folded, and shifted,
together with the beds of the underlying cretaceous forma
tion. Within this area they have been even more deranged
than is the English chalk with flints along the central axis
CHAP. xvii. IN THE ISLAND OF MOEN. 343
of the Isle of Wight in Hampshire, or of Purbeck in Dorset
shire. The whole displacement of the chalk is evidently
posterior in date to the origin of the drift, since the beds of
the latter are horizontal where the fundamental chalk is hori
zontal, and inclined, curved, or vertical where the chalk dis
plays signs of similar derangement. Although I had come
to these conclusions respecting the structure of Moen in
1835, after devoting several days in company with Dr. Forch-
hammer to its examination,* I should have hesitated to cite
the spot as exemplifying convulsions on so grand a scale, of
such extremely modern date, had not the island been since
thoroughly investigated by a most able and reliable authority,
the Danish geologist, Professor Puggaard, who has published
a series of detailed sections of the cliffs.
These cliffs extend through the north-eastern coast of the
island, called Moens Klint,f where the chalk precipices are
bold and picturesque, being 300 and 400 feet high, with tall
beech-trees growing on their summits, and covered here and
there at their base with huge taluses of fallen drift, verdant
with wild shrubs and grass, by which the monotony of a
continuous range of white chalk cliffs is prevented.
In the low part of the island, at A, fig. 47, or the southern
extremity of the line of section above alluded to, the drift
is horizontal, but when we reach B, a change, both in the
height of the cliffs and in the inclination of the strata, begins
to be perceptible, and the chalk No. 1 soon makes its appear
ance from beneath the overlying members of the drift
Nos. 2, 3, 4, and 5.
This chalk, with its layers of flints, is so like that of
England as to require no description. The incumbent
* Lyell, Geological Transactions, Bern, 1851; and Bulletin de la So-
2nd series, vol. ii. p. 243. ciete" Geologique de France, 1851.
t Puggaard, Geologiedlnsel Moen,
344
STRUCTURE OF ISLAND OF MOEN :
CHAP. XVII.
drift consists of the following subdivisions, beginning with
the lowest :
No. 2. Stratified loam and sand, five feet thick, containing
at one spot, near the base of the cliff at s, fig. 48, Cardium
edule, Tellina solidula, and Turritella, with fragments of
other shells. Between No. 2 and the chalk No. 1, there
usually intervenes a breccia of broken chalk flints.
No. 3. Unstratified blue clay or till, with small pebbles
Fig. 47
Southern extremity of Moens Klint (Puggaard).
A Horizontal drift.
B Chalk and overlying drift beginning to rise.
c First flexure and fault. Height of cliff at this point, 180 feet.
Fig. 48
Section of Moens Klint (Puggaard), continued from fig. 47.
s Fossil shells of recent species in the drift at this point.^
G Greatest height near G, 280 feet.
and fragments of Scandinavian rocks occasionally scattered
through it, twenty feet thick.
No. 4. A second unstratified mass of yellow and more sandy
clay forty feet thick, with pebbles and angular polished and
striated blocks of granite and other Scandinavian rocks,
transported from a distance.
No. 5. Stratified sands and gravel, with occasionally large
CHAP. xvii. M. PUGGAARD'S SECTIONS. 345
erratic blocks ; the whole mass varying from forty to a hun
dred feet in thickness, but this only in a few spots.
The angularity of many of the blocks in Nos. 3 and 4, and
the glaciated surfaces of others, and the transportation from
a distance attested by their crystalline nature, proves them to
belong to the northern drift or glacial period.
It will be seen that the four subdivisions 2, 3, 4, and 5, begin
to rise at B, fig. 47, and that at c, where the cliff is 180 feet
high, there is a sharp flexure shared equally by the chalk and
the incumbent drift. Between D and G, fig. 48, we observe a
great fracture in the rocks with synclinal and anticlinal folds,
exhibited in cliffs nearly 300 feet high, the drift beds partici
pating in all the bendings of the chalk ; that is to say, the
three lower members of the drift, including No. 2, which, at
the point s in this diagram, contains the shells of recent
species before alluded to.
Near the northern end of the Moens Klint, at a place
called 'Taler,' more than 300 feet high, are seen similar
folds, so sharp that there is an appearance of four distinct
alternations of the glacial and cretaceous formations in vertical
or highly inclined beds ; the chalk at one point bending over,
so that the position of all the beds is reversed.
But the most wonderful shiftings and faultings of the beds
are observable in the Dronningestol, part of the same cliff, 400
feet in perpendicular height, where, as shown in fig. 49 (p. 346),
the drift is thoroughly entangled and mixed up with the
dislocated chalk.
If we follow the lines of fault, we may see, says M. Puggaard,
along the planes of contact of the shifted beds, the marks of
polishing and rubbing, which the chalk flints have undergone,
as have many stones in the gravel of the drift, and some of
these have also been forced into the soft chalk. The manner
in which the top of some of the arches of bent chalk have
been cut off in this and several adjoining sections, attests the
346
M. PUaGAAKD's CONCLUSIONS.
CHAP. XVII.
great denudation which accompanied the disturbances, portions
of the bent strata having been removed, probably while they
were emerging from beneath the sea.
Fig. 49
Post-glacial disturbances of vertical, folded, and shifted strata of chalk and drift,
in the Dronningestol Moen, height 400 feet (Puggaard).
1 Chalk, with flints.
2 Marine stratified loam, lowest member of glacial formation.
3 Blue clay or till, with erratic blocks unstratified.
4 Yellow sandy till, with pebbles and glaciated boulders.
5 Stratified sand and gravel with erratics.
M. Puggaard has deduced the following conclusions from
his study of these cliffs.
1st. The white chalk, when it was still in horizontal strati
fication, but after it had suffered considerable denudation,
subsided gradually, so that the lower beds of drift No. 2, with
their littoral shells, were superimposed on the chalk in a
shallow sea.
2nd. The overlying unstratified boulder clays 3 and 4
were thrown down in deeper water by the aid of floating ice
coming from the north.
3rd. Irregular subsidences then began, and occasionally
partial failures of support, causing the bending and sometimes
the engulfment of overlying masses both of the chalk and
drift, and causing the various dislocations above described
and depicted. The downward movement continued till it
exceeded 400 feet, for upon the surface even of No 5, in some
parts of the island, lie huge erratics twenty feet or more in
CHAP. xvii. DIRECTIONS OF SUCCESSIVE MOVEMENTS. 347
diameter, which imply that they were carried by ice in a sea
of sufficient depth to float large ice-bergs.
4th. After this subsidence, the re-elevation and partial
denudation of the cretaceous and glacial beds took place
during a general upward movement, like that now ex
perienced in parts of Sweden and Norway.
In regard to the lines of movement in Moen, M. Puggaard
believes, after an elaborate comparison of the cliffs with the
interior of the island, that they took at least three distinct
directions at as many successive eras, all of post-glacial date ;
the first line running from ESE. to WNW., with lines
of fracture at right angles to them ; the second running from
SSE. to NNW., also with fractures in a transverse direc
tion ; and lastly, a sinking in a N. and S. direction, with other
subsidences of contemporaneous date running at right angles,
or E. and W.
When we approach the north-west end of Moens Klint, or
the range of coast above described, the strata begin to be
less bent and broken, and, after travelling for a short distance
beyond, we find the chalk and overlying drift in the same
horizontal position as at the southern end of the Moens Klint.
What makes these convulsions the more striking is the fact
that in the other adjoining Danish islands, as well as in a
large part of Moen itself, both the secondary and tertiary
formations are quite undisturbed.
It is impossible to behold such effects of reiterated local
movements, all of post-tertiary date, without reflecting that,
but for the accidental presence of the stratified drift, all of
which might easily, where there has been so much denudation,
have been missing, even if it had once existed, we might
have referred the vertically and flexures and faults of the
rocks to an ancient period, such as the era between the chalk
with flints and the Maestricht chalk, or to the time of the
latter formation, or to the eocene, or miocene, or older
348 UNEQUAL MOVEMENT IN FINMARK. CHAP, xvn,
pliocene eras, even the last of them, long prior to the com
mencement of the glacial epoch. Hence we may be permitted
to suspect that in some other regions, where we have no such
means at our command for testing the exact date of certain
movements, the time of their occurrence may be far more
modern than we usually suppose. In this way some apparent
anomalies in the position of erratic blocks, seen occasionally
at great heights above the parent rocks from which they
have been detached, might be explained, as well as the irre
gular direction of certain glacial furrows like those described
by Professor Keilhau and Mr. Horbye on the mountains of
the Dovrefjeld in lat. 62 N., where the striation and friction
is said to be independent of the present shape and slope of
the mountains.* Although even in such cases it remains to
be proved whether a general crust of continental ice, like that
of Greenland, described by Rink (see above, p. 235), would
not account for the deviation of the furrows and striae from the
normal directions which they ought to have followed had they
been due to separate glaciers filling the existing valleys.
It appears that in general the upward movements in Scan
dinavia, which have raised sea-beaches containing marine
shells of recent species to the height of several hundred feet,
have been tolerably uniform over very wide spaces ; yet a
remarkable exception to this rule was observed by M. Bravais,
at Altenfiord, in Finmark, between lat. 70 and 71 N.
An ancient water-level, indicated by a sandy deposit forming
a terrace, and by marks of the erosion of the*waves, can be
followed for thirty miles from south to north along the
borders of a fiord rising gradually from a height of eighty-five
feet to an elevation of 220 feet above the sea, or at the rate
of about four feet in a mile.f
To pass to another and very remote part of the world, we
* Observations sur les Phenomenes f Proceedings of the Geological
d'Erosion en Norwege, 1857. Society, 1845, vol. iv. p. 94.
CHAP. xvii. EARTHQUAKES IN NEW ZEALAND. 349
have witnessed, so late as January 1855, in the northern
island of New Zealand, a sudden and permanent rise of land
on the northern shores of Cook's straits, which at one point,
called Muko-muka, was so unequal as to amount to nine feet
vertically, while it declined gradually from this maximum of
upheaval in a distance of about twenty-three miles north
west of the greatest rise, to a point where no change of level
was perceptible. Mr. Edward Koberts, of the Eoyal Engineers,
employed by the British Government at the time of the
shock in executing public works on the coast, ascertained
that the extreme upheaval of certain ancient rocks followed
a line of fault running at least ninety miles from south to
north into the interior ; and, what is of great geological
interest, immediately to the east of this fault, the country,
consisting of tertiary strata, remained unmoved or stationary ;
a fact well established by the position of a line of nullipores
marking the sea-level before the earthquake, both on the
surface of the tertiary and paleozoic rocks.*
The repetition of such unequal movements, especially if
they recurred at intervals along the same lines of fracture,
would in the course of ages cause the strata to dip at a high
angle in one direction, while towards the opposite point of
the compass they would terminate abruptly in a steep escarp
ment.
But it is probable that the multiplication of such move
ments in the post-tertiary period has rarely been so great as
to produce results like those above described in Moen, for
the principal movements in any given period seem to be of
that more uniform kind spoken of at p. 334, by which the
topography of limited districts and the position of the
strata are not visibly altered except in their height relatively
* Bulletin de la Socie~te Geologique municated to me by Messrs. Eoberts
de France, vol. xiii. p. 660, 1856, and Walter ManteU.
where I have described the facts com-
350 UNIFORM MOVEMENT PREDOMINATES. CHAP. xvu.
to the sea. Were it otherwise we should not find conform
able strata of all ages, including the primary fossiliferous of
shallow-water origin, which must have remained horizontal
throughout vast areas during downward movements of several
thousand feet, going on at the period of their accumulation.
Still less should we find the same primary strata, such as the
carboniferous, Devonian, or Silurian, still remaining hori
zontal over thousands of square leagues, as in parts of North
America and Eussia, having escaped dislocation and flexure
throughout the entire series of epochs which separate paleozoic
from recent times. Not that they have been motionless, for
they have undergone so much denudation, and of such a kind,
as can only be explained by supposing the strata to have
been subjected to great oscillations of level, and exposed in
some cases repeatedly to the destroying and planing action of
the waves of the sea.
It seems probable that the successive convulsions in Moen
were contemporary with those upward and downward move
ments of the glacial period which were described in the
thirteenth and some of the following chapters, and that they
ended before the upper beds of No. 5, p. 346, with its large
erratic blocks, were deposited, as some of those beds occurring
in the disturbed parts of Moen appear to have escaped the
convulsions to which Nos. 2, 3, and 4 were subjected. If
this be so, the whole derangement, although post-pliocene,
may have been anterior to the human epoch, or rather to the
earliest date to which the existence of man has as yet been
traced back.
CHAP. xvm. GLACIAL PERIOD IN NORTH AMERICA. 35T
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE GLACIAL PERIOD IN NORTH AMERICA.
POST-GLACIAL STRATA CONTAINING REMAINS OF MASTODON GIGANTEUS
IN NORTH AMERICA SCARCITY OF MARINE SHELLS IN GLACIAL DRIFT
OF CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES GREATER SOUTHERN EXTENSION
OF ICE-ACTION IN NORTH AMERICA THAN IN EUROPE TRAINS OF
ERRATIC BLOCKS OF VAST SIZE IN BERKSHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS
DESCRIPTION OF THEIR LINEAR ARRANGEMENT AND POINTS OF DE
PARTURE THEIR TRANSPORTATION REFERRED TO FLOATING AND
COAST ICE GENERAL REMARKS ON THE CAUSES OF FORMER CHANGES
OF CLIMATE AT SUCCESSIVE GEOLOGICAL EPOCHS SUPPOSED EFFECTS
OF THE DIVERSION OF THE GULF STREAM IN A NORTHERLY INSTEAD
OF NORTH-EASTERLY DIRECTION DEVELOPMENT OF EXTREME COLD
ON THE OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC LN THE GLACIAL PERIOD
NOT STRICTLY SIMULTANEOUS NUMBER OF SPECIES OF PLANTS AND
ANIMALS COMMON TO PRE-GLACIAL AND POST-GLACIAL TIMES.
ON the North American Continent, between the arctic
circle and the 42nd parallel of latitude, we meet with
signs of ice-action on a scale as grand if not grander than in
Europe ; and there also the excess of cold appears to have been
first felt, at the close of the tertiary, and to have continued
throughout a large portion of the post-pliocene period.
The general absence of organic remains in the North
American glacial formation, makes it as difficult as in Europe,
to determine what mammalia lived on the continent at the
time of the most intense refrigeration, or when extensive
areas were becoming strewed over with glacial drift and
erratic blocks, but it is certain that a large proboscidean now
extinct, the Mastodon giganteus Cuv., together with many
other quadrupeds, some of them now living and others
extinct, played a conspicuous part in the post-glacial era.
By its frequency as a fossil species, this pachyderm represents
352 REMAINS OF MASTODON GIGANTEUS. CHAP. xvm.
the European Mephas primigenius, although the latter also
occurs fossil in the United States and Canada, and abounds,
as I learn from Sir John Kichardson, in latitudes farther north
than those to which the mastodon has been traced.
In the state of New York, the mastodon is not unfrequently
met with in bogs and lacustrine deposits formed in hollows in
the drift, and therefore, in a geological position, much resem
bling that of recent peat and shell-marl in the British Isles,
Denmark, or the Valley of the Somme, as before described.
Sometimes entire skeletons have been discovered within a
few feet of the surface, in peaty earth at the bottom of small
ponds, which the agriculturists had drained. The shells in
these cases belong to freshwater genera, such as Limnea,
PTiysa, Planorbis, Cyclas, and others, differing from Euro
pean species, but the same as those now proper to ponds and
lakes in the same parts of America.
I have elsewhere given an account of several of these
localities which I visited in 1842,* and can state that they
certainly have a more modern aspect than almost all the
European deposits in which remains of the mammoth occur,
although a few instances are cited of Elephas primigenius
having been dug out of peat in Great Britain. Thus I was
shown a mammoth's tooth in the museum at Torquay, in
Devonshire, which is believed to have been dredged up from
a deposit of vegetable matter now partially submerged beneath
the sea. A more elevated part of the same peaty formation
constitutes the bottom of the valley in which Tor Abbey
stands. This individual elephant must certainly have been of
more modern date than his fellows found fossil in the gravel of
the Brixham cave, before described (p. 100), for it flourished
when the physical geography of Devonshire, unlike that of
the cave period, was almost identical with that now established.
* Travels in North America, vol. i. p. 55, London, 1845 ; and Manual of
Geology, ch. xiL 5th ed. p. 144.
CHAP, xviir. AGE OF THE MASTODON. 353
I cannot help suspecting that many tusks and teeth of the
mammoth, said to have been found in peat, may be as spu
rious as are the horns of the rhinoceros cited more than once
in the s Memoirs of the Wernerian Society,' as having been ob
tained from shell-marl in Forfarshire and other Scotch coun
ties ; yet, between the period when the mammoth was most
abundant, and that when it died out, there must have elapsed
a long interval of ages when it was growing more and more
scarce ; and we may expect to find occasional stragglers buried
in deposits long subsequent in date to others, until at last we
may succeed in tracing a passage from the post-pliocene to
the recent fauna, by geological monuments, which will fill
up the gap before alluded to (p. 144) as separating the era
of the flint tools of Amiens and Abbeville from that of the peat
of the Valley of the Somme.
How far the lacustrine strata of North America, above
mentioned, may help to lessen this hiatus, and whether some
individuals of the Mastodon giganteus may have come down
to the confines of the historical period, is a question not so
easily answered as might at first sight be supposed. A geolo
gist might naturally imagine that the fluviatile formation of
Groat Island, seen at the falls of Niagara, and at several
points below the falls,* was very modern, seeing that the
fossil shells contained in it are all of species now inhabiting
the waters of the Niagara, and seeing also that the deposit is
more modern than the glacial drift of the same locality. In
fact, the old river bed, in which bones of the mastodon occur,
holds the same position relatively to the boulder formation as
tbe strata of shell-marl and boggy-earth, with bones of mas
todon, so frequent in the State of New York, bear to the glacial
drift, and all may be of contemporaneous date. But in the
case of the valley of the Niagara, we happen to have a measure
* Travels in North America, by the Author, vol. i. ch. ii. ; and vol. ii. ch. xix.
AA
354 GLACIAL DEPOSITS IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAP. XVJIT.
of time, which is wanting in the other localities, namely,
the test afforded by the recession of the falls, an operation
still in progress, by which the 'deep ravine of the Niagara,
seven miles long, between Queenstown and Goat Island, has
been hollowed out. This ravine is not only post-glacial, but
also posterior in date to the fluviatile or mastodon-bearing
beds. The individual therefore found fossil near Groat Island
flourished before the gradual excavation of the deep and long
chasm, and we must reckon its antiquity, not by thousands,
but by tens of thousands of years, if I have correctly estimated
the minimum of time which was required for the erosion of
that great ravine.*
The stories widely circulated of bones of the mastodon
having been observed with their surfaces pierced as if by
arrow-heads, or bearing the marks of wounds inflicted
by some stone implement, must in future be more carefully
inquired into, for we can scarcely doubt that the mastodon
in North America lived down to a period when the mammoth
coexisted with man in Europe. But I need say no more on
this subject, having already (p. 200) explained my views in
regard to the evidence of the antiquity of man in North
America, when treating of the human bone discovered at
Natchez, on the Mississippi.
In Canada and the United States, we experience the same
difficulty as in Europe, when we attempt to distinguish
between glacial formations of submarine and those of supra-
marine origin. In the New World, as in Scotland and
England, marine shells of this era have rarely been traced
higher than five hundred feet above the sea, and seven hun
dred feet seems to be the maximum to which at present they
are known to ascend. In the same countries, erratic blocks
have travelled from N. to S., following the same direction as
* Principles of Geology, 9th ed. p. 2 ; and Travels in North America, TO! i.
p. 32, 1845.
CHAP, xviii. ICE-ACTION IN NOKTH AMEEICA. 355
the glacial furrows and striae imprinted almost everywhere on
the solid rocks underlying the drift. Their direction rarely
deviates more than fifteen degrees E. or W. of the meridian,
so that we can scarcely doubt, in spite of the general dearth
of marine shells, that icebergs floating in the sea, and often
running aground on its rocky bottom, were the instruments
by which most of the blocks were conveyed to southern
latitudes.
There are, nevertheless, in the United States, as in Europe,
several groups of mountains which have acted as independent
centres for the dispersion of erratics, as, for example, the
White Mountains, latitude 44 N., the highest of which,
Mount Washington, rises to about 6,300 feet above the sea ;
and according to Professor Hitchcock, some of the loftiest
of the hills of Massachusetts once sent down their glaciers
into the surrounding lower country.
Great southern Extension of Trains of Erratic Blocks in
Berkshire, Massachusetts, U. S., lat. 42 N.
Having treated so fully in this volume of the events of the
glacial period, I am unwilling to conclude without laying
before the reader the evidence displayed in North America,
of ice-action in latitudes farther south, by about ten degrees
than any seen on an equal scale in Europe. This extension
southwards of glacial phenomena, in regions where there are
no snow-covered mountains like the Alps to explain the ex
ception, nor any hills of more than moderate elevation, consti
tutes a feature of the western as compared to the eastern
side of the Atlantic, and must be taken into account when we
speculate on the causes of the refrigeration of the northern
hemisphere during the post-pliocene period.
In 1852, accompanied by Mr. James Hall, State geologist
of New York, author of many able and well-known works
A A 2
356 ICE- ACTION IN NORTH AMERICA. CHAP. xvui.
on geology and paleontology, I examined the glacial drift
and erratics of the county of Berkshire, Massachusetts, and
those of the adjoining parts of the State of New York, a
district about 130 miles inland from the Atlantic coast,
and situated due west of Boston, in lat. 42 25' north. This
latitude corresponds in Europe to that of the north of Por
tugal. Here numerous detached fragments of rock are seen,
having a linear arrangement or being continuous in long
parallel trains, running nearly in straight lines over hill and
dale for distances of five, ten, and twenty miles, and some
times greater distances. Seven of the more conspicuous
of these trains, from 1 to 7 inclusive, fig. 50, are laid down
in the accompanying map or ground plan.* It will be re
marked that they run in a NW. and SE. direction, or almost
transversely to the ranges of hills A, B, and c, which run NNE.
and SSW. The crests of these chains are about 800 feet in
height above the intervening valleys. The blocks of the
northernmost train, No. 7, are of limestone, derived from the
calcareous chain B ; those of the two trains next to the south,
Nos. 6 and 5, are composed exclusively in the first part of
their course of a green chloritic rock of great toughness,
but after they have passed the ridge B, a mixture of calcareous
blocks is observed. After traversing the valley for a distance
of six miles, these two trains pass through depressions or gaps
in the range c, as they had previously done in crossing the
range B, showing that the dispersion of the erratics bears some
relation to the actual inequalities of the surface, although the
course of the same blocks is perfectly independent of the
more leading features of the geography of the country, or
those by which the present lines of drainage are determined.
The greater number of the green chloritic fragments in
* This ground plan, and a further livered by me to the Koyal Institu-
account of the Berkshire erratics, was tion of Great Britain, April 27, 1855,
given in an abstract of a lecture de- and published in their Proceedings.
CHAP, xvill. REMARKABLE TRAINS OF ERRATIC BLOCKS. 357
Fig. 50
s \V?
00 '.^ 6.
Rich.in.onil Valley. ';
MAP SHOWING THE RELATIVE POSITION AND DIRECTION OF SEVEN TRAINS OF
ERRATIC BLOCKS IN BERKSHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS, AND IN PART OF THE STATE
OF NEW YORK.
Distance in a straight line, between the mountain ranges A and c, about
A Canaan range, in the State of New York. The crest consists of green
chloritic rock.
B Bichmond range, the western division of which consists in Merriman's
Mount of the same green rock as A, but in a more schistose form, while the
eastern division is composed of slaty limestone.
c The Lenox range, consisting in part of mica-schist, and in some districts
of crystalline limestone.
d Knob in the range A, from which most of the train No. 6 is supposed "o
have been derived.
e Supposed starting point of the train No. 5 in the range A.
/ Hiatus of 175 yards, or space without blocks.
g Sherman's House.
h Perry's Peak.
k FlatKock.
I Merriman's Mount.
358 REMARKABLE TRAINS OF ERRATIC BLOCKS. CHAP. xvm.
m Dupey's Mount.
n Largest block of train, No. 6. See figs. 51 and 52, p. 359.
p Point of divergence of part of the train No. 6, where a branch is sent off
to No. 5.
No. 1 The most southerly train examined by Messrs. Hall and Lyell,
between Stockbridge and Kichmond, composed of blocks of black slate, blue
limestone, and some of the green Canaan rock, with here and there a boulder
of white quartz.
No. 2 Train composed chiefly of large limestone masses, some of them
divided into two or more fragments, by natural joints.
No. 3 Train composed of blocks of limestone and the green Canaan rock ;
passes south of the Kichmond Station on the Albany and Boston railway; is
less defined than Nos. 1 and 2.
No. 4 Train chiefly of limestone blocks, some of them thirty feet in
diameter, running to the north-west of the Eichmond Station, and passing
south of the Methodist Meeting-house, where it is intersected by a railway
cutting.
No. 5 South train of Dr. Eeid, composed entirely of large blocks of the
green chloritic Canaan rock ; passes north of the Old Eichmond Meeting-house,
and is three-quarters of a mile north of the preceding train (No. 4).
No. 6 The great or principal train (north train of Dr. Eeid), composed of
very large blocks of the Canaan rock, diverges at p, and unites by a branch
with train No. 5.
No. 7 A well-defined train of limestone blocks, with a few of the Canaan
rock, traced from the Eichmond to the slope of the Lenox range.
trains 5 and 6 have evidently come from the ridge A,
and a large proportion of the whole from its highest summit,
d, where the crest of the ridge has been worn into those dome-
shaped masses called f roches moutonnees,' already alluded to
(pp. 269 and 293), and where several fragments having this
shape, some of them thirty feet long, are seen in situ, others
only slightly removed from their original position, as if they
had been just ready to set out on their travels. Although
smooth and rounded on their tops, they are angular on their
lower parts, where their outline has been derived from the
natural joints of the rock. Had these blocks been conveyed
from d by glaciers, they would have radiated in all directions
from a centre, whereas not one even of the smaller ones is
found to the westward of A, though a very slight force would
have made them roll down to the base of that ridge, which is
very steep on its western declivity. It is clear, therefore, that
the propelling power, whatever it may have been, acted
exclusively in a south-easterly direction. Professor Hall and
CHAP. XVIII.
DOME-SHAPED ERRATIC.
359
I observed one of the green blocks, twenty-four feet long,
poised upon another about nineteen feet in length. The
largest of all on the west flank of m, or Dupey's Mount,
called the Alderman, is above ninety feet in diameter,
Fig. 51
Erratic dome-shaped block of compact chloritic rock (n map,
fig. 50), near the Eichmond Meeting-house, Berkshire, Massachusetts,
lat, 42 25' N. Length, fifty-two feet ; width, forty feet ; height
above the soil, fifteen feet.
Fig. 52
Section showing position of the block, fig. 51.
a The large block. Fig. 51 and n map, p. 357.
b Fragment detached from the same.
c Unstratified drift with boulders.
d Silurian limestone in inclined stratification.
and nearly three hundred feet in circumference. We counted
at some points between forty and fifty blocks visible at once,
the smallest of them larger than a camel.
360 CHARACTER OF THE DRIFT. CHAP. xvm.
The annexed drawing represents one of the best known of
train No. 6, being that marked n on the map, p. 357. Ac
cording to our measurement it is fifty-two feet long by forty
in width, its height above the drift in which it is partially
buried being fifteen feet. At the distance of several yards
occurs a smaller block, three or four feet in height, twenty
feet long, and fourteen broad, composed of the same compact
chloritic rock, and evidently a detached fragment from the
bigger mass, to the lower and angular part of which it would
fit on exactly. This erratic n has a regularly rounded top,
worn and smoothed like the roches moutonnees before men
tioned, but no part of the attrition can have occurred since it
left its parent rock, the angles of the lower portion being
quite sharp and unblunted.
From railway cuttings through the drift of the neighbour
hood, and other artificial excavations, we may infer that the
position of the block n, if seen in a vertical section, would be
as represented in fig. 52. The deposit c in that section,
p. 359, consists of sand, mud, gravel, and stones, for the most
part unstratified, resembling the till or boulder clay of
Europe. It varies in thickness from ten to fifty feet, being
of greater depth in the valleys. The uppermost portion is
occasionally, though rarely, stratified. Some few of the im
bedded stones have flattened, polished, striated, and furrowed
sides. They consist invariably, like the seven trains above
mentioned, of kinds of rock confined to the region lying to
the NW., none of them having come from any other quarter.
Whenever the surface of the underlying rock has been exposed
by the removal of the superficial detritus, a polished and
furrowed surface is seen, like that underneath a glacier, the
direction of the furrows being from NW. to SE., or corre
sponding to the course of the large erratics.
As all the blocks, instead of being dispersed from a centre,
have been carried in one direction, and across the ridges A, B,
CHAP. xvin. FLOATING OF BOULDEES ON ICE. 361
c, and the intervening valleys, the hypothesis of glaciers is
out of the question. I conceive, therefore, that the erratics
were conveyed to the places they now occupy by coast ice,
when the country was submerged beneath the waters of a
sea cooled by icebergs coming annually from arctic regions.
Fig. 53
N.W.
Canaan
d, e Masses of floating ice carrying fragments of rock.
Suppose the highest peaks of the ridges A, B, c, in the an
nexed diagram, to be alone above water, forming islands, and
d e to be masses of floating ice, which drifted across the Canaan
and Eichmond valleys at a time when they were marine
channels, separating islands, or rather chains of islands, having
a NNE. and SSW. direction. A fragment of ice such as
f/, freighted with a block from A, might run aground, and add
to the heap of erratics at the NW. base of the island (now
ridge) B, or, passing through a sound between B and the next
island of the same group, might float on till it reached the
channel between B and c. Year after year two such exposed
cliffs in the Canaan range as d and e of the map, fig. 50,
p. 357, undermined by the waves, might serve as the points of
departure of blocks, composing the trains Nos. 5 and 6. It
may be objected that oceanic currents could not always have
had the same direction ; this may be true, but during a short
season of the year when the ice was breaking up the prevailing
current may have always run SE.
If it be asked why the blocks of each train are not
more scattered, especially when far from their source, it may
be observed, that after passing through sounds separating
islands, they issued again from a new and narrow starting
362 DISTRIBUTION AND SIZE OF ERRATICS. CHAP. xviu.
point ; moreover, we must not exaggerate the regularity of
the trains, as their width is sometimes twice as great in one
place as in another ; and No. 6 sends off a branch at p 9 which
joins No. 5. There are also stragglers, or large blocks,
here and there in the spaces between the two trains. As to
the distance to which any given block would be carried, that
must have depended on a variety of circumstances ; such as
the strength of the current, t the direction of the wind, the
weight of the block, or the quantity and draught of the ice
attached to it. The smaller fragments would, on the whole,
have the best chance of going farthest ; because, in the first
place, they were more numerous, and then, being lighter, they
required less ice to float them, and would not ground so
readily on shoals, or, if stranded, would be more easily started
again on their travels. Many of the blocks, which at first
sight seem to consist of single masses, are found, when ex
amined, to be made up of two, three, or more pieces, divided
by natural joints. In case of a second removal by ice, one
or more portions would become detached and be drifted to
different points further on. Whenever this happened, the
original size would be lessened, and the angularity of the
block previously worn by the breakers would be restored, and
this tendency to split may explain why some of the far-trans
ported fragments remain very angular.
These various considerations may also account for the fact
that the average size of the blocks of all the seven trains
laid down on the plan, fig. 50, lessens sensibly in proportion
as we recede from the principal points of departure of par
ticular kinds of erratics, yet not with any regularity, a huge
block now and then recurring when the rest of the train
consists of smaller ones.
All geologists acquainted with the district now under con
sideration are agreed that the mountain ranges A, B, and c, as
well as the adjoining valleys, had assumed their actual form
CHAP. xvin. TRANSPORTING POWER OF COAST-ICE. 3G3
and position before the drift and erratics accumulated on and
in them, and before the surface of the fixed rocks was polished
and furrowed. I have the less hesitation in ascribing the
transporting power to coast-ice, because I saw, in 1852, an
angular block of sandstone, eight feet in diameter, which had
been brought down several miles by ice, only three years before,
to the mouth of the Petitcodiac estuary, in Nova Scotia,
where it joins the Bay of Fundy ; and I ascertained that on
the shores of the same bay, at the South Joggins, in the year
1850, much larger blocks had been removed by coast-ice,
and after they had floated half a mile, had been dropped in
salt water by the side of a pier built for loading vessels with
coal, so that it was necessary at low tide to blast these huge
ice-borne rocks with gunpowder, in order that the vessels
might be able to draw up alongside the pier. These recent
exemplifications of the vast carrying powers of ice occurred
in lat. 46 N. (corresponding to that of Bordeaux), in a bay
never invaded by icebergs.
I may here remark that a sheet of ice of moderate thick
ness, if it extend over a wide area, may suffice to buoy up
the largest erratics which fall upon it. The size of these will
depend, not on the intensity of the cold, but on the manner
in which the rock is jointed, and the consequent dimensions
of the blocks into which it splits, when falling from an
undermined cliff.
When I first endeavoured in the ( Principles of Geology,' in
1830,* to explain the causes, both of the warmer and colder
climates, which have at former periods prevailed on the
globe, I referred to successive variations in the height and
position of the land, and its extent relatively to the sea in
polar and equatorial latitudes also to fluctuations in the
course of oceanic currents and other geographical conditions,
* 1st edit. ch. vii. ; 9th edit. ib.
364 POWER OF THE GULF-STREAM CHAP. xvm.
by the united influence of which I still believe the principal
revolutions in the meteorological state of the atmosphere
at different geological periods have been brought about. The
Gulf Stream was particularly alluded to by me as moderating
the winter climate of northern Europe, and as depending for
its direction on temporary and accidental peculiarities, in
the shape of the land, especially that of the narrow Straits of
Bahama, which a slight modification in the earth's crust would
entirely alter.
Mr. Hopkins, in a valuable essay on the causes of former
changes of climate,* has attempted to calculate how much
the annual temperature of Europe would be lowered if this
Grulf Stream were turned in some other and new direction,
and estimates the amount at about six or seven degrees of
Fahrenheit. He also supposes that if at the same time a con
siderable part of northern and central Europe were submerged,
so that a cold current from the arctic seas should sweep over
it, an additional refrigeration of three or four degrees would
be produced. He has speculated in the same essay on the
effects which would be experienced in the eastern hemisphere
if the same mighty current of warm water, instead of
crossing the Atlantic, were made to run northwards from the
Grulf of Mexico through the region now occupied by the valley
of the Mississippi, and so onwards to the arctic regions.
After reflecting on what has been said in the thirteenth
chapter of the submergence and re-elevation of the British
Isles and the adjoining parts of Europe, and the rising
and sinking of the Alps, and the basins of some of the great
rivers flowing from that chain, since the commencement of the
glacial period, a geologist will not be disposed to object to the
theory above adverted to, on the score of its demanding too
much conversion of land into sea, or almost any amount of geo-
* Hopkins, Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. viii. p. 56, 1852.
CHAP, xviii. TO AFFECT CLIMATE. 365
graphical change in post-pliocene times. But a difficulty of
another kind presents itself. We have seen that, during the
glacial period, the cold in Europe extended much farther south
than it does at present, and in this chapter we have demon
strated that in North America the cold also extended no less
than 10 of latitude still farther southwards than in Europe; so
that if a great body of heated water, instead of flowing north
eastward, were made to pass through what is now the centre
of the American continent towards the Arctic circle, it could
not fail to mitigate the severity of the winter's cold in pre
cisely those latitudes where the cold was greatest, and where
it has left monuments of ice-action surpassing in extent any
exhibited on the European side of the ocean.
In the actual state of the globe, the isothermal lines, or
rather the lines of equal winter temperature, when traced
eastward from Europe to North America, bend 10 south,
there being a marked excess of winter cold in corresponding
latitudes west of the Atlantic. During the glacial period,
viewing it as a whole, we behold signs of a precisely similar
deflection of these same isochimenal lines when followed from
east to west ; so that if, in the hope of accounting for the
former severity of glacial action in Europe, we suppose the
absence of the Grulf Stream and imagine a current of equi
valent magnitude to have flowed due north from the Grulf of
Mexico, we introduce, as we have just hinted, a source of heat
into precisely that part of the continent where the extreme
conditions of refrigeration are most manifest. Viewed in this
light, the hypothesis in question would render the glacial
phenomena described in the present chapter more perplexing
and anomalous than ever. But here another question arises,
whether the eras at which the maximum of cold was attained
on the opposite sides of the Atlantic were really contem
poraneous? We have now discovered not only that the
glacial period was of vast duration, but that it passed through
366 MERIDIONAL ZONES CHAP. xvm.
various phases and oscillations of temperature; so that,
although the chief polishing and furrowing of the rocks and
transportation of erratics in Europe and North America may
have taken place contemporaneously, according to the ordinary
language of geology, or when the same testacea and the same
post-pliocene assemblage of mammalia flourished, yet the
extreme development of cold on the opposite sides of the
ocean may not have been strictly simultaneous, but, on the
contrary, the one may have preceded or followed the other by
a thousand or more than a thousand centuries.
It is probable that the greatest refrigeration of Norway,
Sweden, Scotland, Wales, the Vosges, and the Alps coin
cided very nearly in time ; but when the Scandinavian and
Scotch mountains were encrusted with a general covering of
ice, similar to that now enveloping Greenland, this last country
may not have been in nearly so glacial a condition as now,
just as we find that the old icy crust and great glaciers,
which have left their mark on the mountains of Norway and
Sweden, have now disappeared, precisely at a time when the
accumulation of ice in Greenland is so excessive. In other
words, we see that in the present state of the northern hemi
sphere, at the distance of about fifteen hundred miles, two
meridional zones, enjoying very different conditions of tem
perature, may co-exist, and we are, therefore, at liberty to
imagine some former alternations of colder and milder
climates on the opposite sides of the ocean throughout the
post-pliocene era of a compensating kind, the cold on the one
side balancing the milder temperature on the other. By
assuming such a succession of events we can more easily
explain why there has not been a greater extermination of
species, both terrestrial and aquatic, in polar and temperate
regions, during the glacial epoch, and why so many species
are common to pre-glacial and post-glacial times.
The numerous plants which are common to the temperate
CHAP. xvm. OF COLDER AND MILDER CLIMATE. 367
zones N. and S. of the equator have been referred by Mr.
Darwin and Dr. Hooker to migrations, which took place along
mountain chains running from N. to S. during some of the
colder phases of the glacial epoch.* Such an hypothesis
enables us to dispense with the doctrine that the same species
ever originated independently in twodistinct and distant are as ;
and it becomes more feasible if we admit the doctrine of the
co-existence of meridional belts of warmer and colder climate,
instead of the simultaneous prevalence of extreme cold both
in the eastern and western hemisphere. It also seems neces
sary, as colder currents of water always flow to lower lati
tudes, while warmer ones are running towards polar regions,
that some such compensation should take place, and that
an increase of cold in one region must to a certain extent
be balanced by a mitigation of temperature elsewhere.
Sir John F. Herschel, in his recent work on e Physical Geo
graphy,' when speaking of the open sea which is caused in
part of the polar regions by the escape of ice through Behring's
Straits, and the flow of warmer water northwards through the
same channel, observes that these straits, by which the conti
nents of Asia and North America are now parted, ' are ooly
thirty miles broad where narrowest, and only twenty-five
fathoms in their greatest depth.' But ' this narrow channel,'
he adds, 'is yet important in the economy of nature, inasmuch
as it allows a portion of the circulating water from a warmer
region to find its way into the polar basin, aiding thereby not
only to mitigate the extreme rigour of the polar cold, but to
prevent in all probability a continual accretion of ice, which
else might rise to a mountainous height.' f
Behring's Straits, here alluded to, happen to agree singularly
in width and depth with the Straits of Dover, the difference
* Darwin, Origin of Species, ch. xi. p. 365 ; Hooker, Flora of Australia,
Introduction, p. 18.
f Herschel' s Physical Geography, p. 41, 1861.
368 CLIMATE AFFECTED BY CURRENTS. CHAP. xvm.
in depth not being more than three or four feet ; so that at
the rate of upheaval, which is now going on in many parts of
Scandinavia, of two and a half feet in a century, such straits
might be closed in 3000 years, and a vast accumulation of ice
to the northward commence forthwith.
But, on the other hand, although such an accumulation
might spread its refrigerating influence for many miles south
wards beyond the new barrier, the warm current which now
penetrates through the straits, and which at other times is
chilled by floating ice issuing from them, would, when totally
excluded from all communication with the icy sea, have its
temperature raised and its course altered, so that the climate
of some other area must immediately begin to improve.
The scope and limits of this volume forbid my pursuing
these speculations and reasonings farther ; but I trust I
have said enough to show that the monuments of the glacial
period, when more thoroughly investigated, will do much
towards expanding our views as to the antiquity of the fauna
and flora now contemporary with man, and will therefore
enable us the better to determine the time at which man
began in the northern hemisphere to form part of the existing
fauna.
CHAP. xix. RECAPITULATION OP RESULTS. 369
CHAPTEK XIX.
RECAPITULATION OF GEOLOGICAL PROOFS OF MAN'S ANTIQUITY.
RECAPITULATION OF RESULTS ARRIVED AT IN THE EARLIER CHAPTERS
AGES OF STONE AND BRONZE DANISH PEAT AND KITCHEN-MIDDENS
SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS LOCAL CHANGES IN VEGETATION AND IN
THE WILD AND DOMESTICATED ANIMALS AND IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY
COEVAL WITH THE AGE OF BRONZE AND THE LATER STONE PERIOD
ESTIMATES OF THE POSITIVE DATE OF SOME DEPOSITS OF THE LATER
STONE PERIOD ANCIENT DIVISION OF THE AGE OF STONE OF ST.
ACHEUL AND AURIGNAC MIGRATIONS OF MAN IN THAT PERIOD FROM
THE CONTINENT TO ENGLAND IN POST-GLACIAL TIMES SLOW RATE
OF PROGRESS IN BARBAROUS AGES DOCTRINE OF THE SUPERIOR IN
TELLIGENCE AND ENDOWMENTS OF THE ORIGINAL STOCK OF MANKIND
CONSIDERED OPINIONS OF THE GREEKS AND ROMANS, AND THEIR
COINCIDENCE WITH THOSE OF THE MODERN PROGRESSIONIST EARLY
EGYPTIAN CIVILISATION AND ITS DATE IN COMPARISON WITH THAT OF
THE FIRST AND SECOND STONE PERIODS.
THE ages of stone and bronze, so called by archaeologists,
were spoken of in the earlier chapters of this work.
That of bronze has been traced back to times anterior to the
Roman occupation of Helvetia, Gaul, and other countries north
of the Alps. When weapons of that mixed metal were in use,
a somewhat uniform civilisation seems to have prevailed over
a wide extent of central and northern Europe, and the long
duration of such a state of things in Denmark and Switzer
land is shown by the gradual improvement which took place
in the useful and ornamental arts. Such progress is attested
by the increasing variety of the forms, and the more perfect
finish and tasteful decoration of the tools and utensils ob
tained from the more modern deposits of the bronze age, those
B B
370 RECAPITULATION OF RESULTS. CHAP. xix.
from the upper layers of peat, for example, as compared to those
found in the lower ones. The great number also of the Swiss
lake-dwellings of the bronze age, (those already discovered
amounting to about seventy,) and the large population which
some of them were capable of containing, afford indication
of a considerable lapse of time, as does the thickness of the
stratum of mud in which, in some of the lakes, the works of
art are entombed. The unequal antiquity, also, of the
settlements, is occasionally attested by the different degrees
of decay which the wooden stakes or piles have undergone,
some of them projecting more above the mud than others,
while all the piles of the antecedent age of stone have
rotted away quite down to the level of the mud, such part
of them only as was originally driven into the bed of the
lake having escaped decomposition.*
Among the monuments of the stone period, which im
mediately preceded that of bronze, the polished hatchets
called celts are abundant, and were in very general use in
Europe before metallic tools were introduced. We learn,
from the Danish peat and shell-mounds, and from the older
Swiss lake-settlements, that the first inhabitants were hunters,
who fed almost entirely on game, but their food in after
ages consisted more and more of tamed animals, and, still
later, a more complete change to a pastoral state took place,
accompanied, as population increased, by the cultivation of
some cereals (p. 21).
Both the shells and quadrupeds, belonging to the ages of
stone and bronze, consist exclusively of species now living
in Europe, the fauna being the same as that which flourished
in G-aul at the time when it was conquered by Julius Csesar,
even the Bos primigenius, the only animal of which the
wild type is lost, being still represented, according to Cuvier,
* Troy on, Habitations lacustres. Lausanne, 1860.
CHAP. xix. AGES OF STONE AND BRONZE. 371
Bell, and Kutimeyer, by one of the domesticated races of
cattle now in Europe. (See p. 25.)
These monuments, therefore, whether of stone or bronze,
belong to what I have termed geologically the Kecent Period,
the definition of which some may think rather too dependent
on negative evidence, or on the non-discovery hitherto of
extinct mammalia, such as the mammoth, which may one
day turn up in a fossil state in some of the oldest peaty
deposits, as, indeed, it is already said to have done at some
spots, though I have failed, as yet, to obtain authentic
evidence of the fact.* No doubt some such exceptional cases
may be met with in the course of future investigations, for
we are still imperfectly acquainted with the entire fauna of
the age of stone in Denmark, as we may infer from an
opinion expressed by Steenstrup, that some of the instru
ments exhumed by antiquaries from the Danish peat are
made of the bones and horns of the elk and reindeer. Yet
no skeleton or uncut bone of either of those species has
hitherto been observed in the same peat.
Nevertheless, the examination made by naturalists of the
various Danish and Swiss deposits of the recent period has
been so searching, that the finding in them of a stray
elephant or rhinoceros, should it ever occur, would prove
little more than that some few individuals lingered on, when
the species was on the verge of extinction, and such rare
exceptions would not render the classification above pro
posed inappropriate.
At the time when many wild quadrupeds and birds were
growing scarce, and some of them becoming locally ex
tirpated in Denmark, great changes were taking place in the
* A molar of E. primigenius, in a submerged mass of vegetable matter
very fresh state, in the museum at at the extremity of the valley in which
Torquay, believed to have been washed Tor Abbey stands, is the best case I
up by the waves of the sea out of the have seen.
B B 2
372 DANISH PEAT AND ( KITCHEN-MIDDENS.' CHAP, xix,
vegetation. The pine, or Scotch fir, buried in the oldest
peat, gave place at length to the oak, and the oak, after
flourishing for ages, yielded, in its turn, to the beech, the
periods when these three forest trees predominated in suc
cession tallying pretty nearly with the ages of stone, bronze,
and iron in Denmark (p. 16). In the same country, also,
during the stone period, various fluctuations, as we have
seen, occurred in physical geography. Thus, on the ocean
side of certain islands, the old refuse-heaps, or 'kitchen-
middens,' were destroyed by the waves, the cliffs having
wasted away, while, on the side of the Baltic, where the sea
was making no encroachment, or where the land was some
times gaining on the sea, such mounds remained uninjured.
It was also shown, that the oyster, which supplied food to
the primitive people, attained its full size in parts of the
Baltic where it cannot now exist, owing to a want of saltness
in the water, and that certain marine univalves and bivalves,
such as the common periwinkle, mussel, and cockle, of which
the castaway shells are found in the mounds, attained in the
olden time their full dimensions, like the oysters, whereas
the same species, though they still live on the coast of the
inland sea adjoining the mounds, are dwarfed, and never half
their natural size, the water being rendered too fresh for them
by the influx of so many rivers.
As for several calculations, in which certain archaeologists
and geologists of merit have indulged, in the hope of arriving
at some positive dates, or exact estimates of the minimum of
time required for the changes in physical geography, or in
the range and numerical preponderance of certain species of
animals, or the advance in human civilisation in the Eecent
Period, or during the ages of stone, bronze, and iron,
whether the computation related to the growth of peat, or
to the conversion of water into land, since some lake settle
ments were founded, or the various depths at which, in the
CHAP. xix. SWISS LAKE-DWELLINGS. 373
delta of the Tiniere, vegetable soils have been met with,
containing human bones and works of art of the Roman,
the bronze, and the stone periods, they can only be con
sidered, as yet, as being tentative, and, if a rough approxi
mation to the truth has been made, it is all that can be
expected. (See p. 27 et seq.) They have led to the assign
ment of 4,000 and 7,000 years before our time as the lowest
antiquity which can be ascribed to certain events and monu
ments; but much collateral evidence will be required to
confirm these estimates, and to decide whether the number
of centuries has been under or over-rated.
Between the newer or recent division of the stone period
and the older division, which has been called the Post -pliocene,
there was evidently a vast interval of time a gap in the
history of the past, into which many monuments of inter
mediate date will one day have to be intercalated. Of this
kind are those caves in the south of France, in which M.
Lartet has lately found bones of the reindeer, associated with
works of art somewhat more advanced in style than those of
St. Acheul or of Aurignac (p. 190). In the valley of the
Somme, we have seen that peat exists of great thickness,
containing in its upper layers Roman and Celtic memo
rials, the whole of which has been of slow growth, in basins
or depressions conforming to the present contour and drain
age levels of the country, and long posterior in date to older
gravels, containing bones of the mammoth and a large number
of flint implements of a very rude and antique type. Some
of those gravels were accumulated in the channels of rivers
which flowed at higher levels, by a hundred feet, than the
present streams, and before the valley had attained its present
depth and form. No intermixture has been observed in
those ancient river beds of any polished Celtic weapons/ or
other relics of the more modern times, or of the second or
6 Recent ' stone period, nor any interstratified peat ; and the
374 LOCAL CHANGES IN VEGETATION, ETC. CHAP. xix.
climate of those Post-pliocene ages, when Man was a
denizen of the north-west of France and of southern and cen
tral England, appears to have been much more severe in
winter than it is now in the same region, though far less cold
than in the glacial period which immediately preceded.
We may presume that the time demanded for the gradual
dying out or extirpation of a large number of wild beasts
which figure in the Post-pliocene strata, and are missing in
the Eecent fauna, was of protracted duration, for we know
how tedious a task it is in our own times, even with the aid
of fire-arms, to exterminate a noxious quadruped, a wolf, for
example, in any region comprising within it an extensive
forest or a mountain chain. In many villages in the north
of Bengal, the tiger still occasionally carries off its human
victims, and the abandonment of late years by the natives of
a part of the Sunderbunds or lower delta of the Granges,
which they once peopled, is attributed chiefly to the ravages
of the tiger. It is probable that causes more general and
powerful than the agency of Man, alterations in climate,
variations in the range of many species of animals, vertebrate
and invertebrate, and of plants, geographical changes in the
height, depth, and extent of land and sea, some or all of
these combined, have given rise, in a vast series of years, to
the annihilation, not only of many large mammalia, but to
the disappearance of the Cyrena fluminalis, once common in
the rivers of Europe, and to the different range or relative
abundance of other shells which we find in the European
drifts.
That the growing power of Man may have lent its aid as the
destroying cause of many Post-pliocene species, must, however,
be granted ; yet, before the introduction of fire-arms, or even
the use of improved weapons of stone, it seems more wonder
ful that the aborigines were able to hold their own against
the cave-lion, hyaena, and wild bull, and to cope with such
CHAP. xix. LOCAL CHANGES IN PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 375
enemies, than that they failed to bring about their speedy
extinction.
It is already clear that Man was contemporary in Europe
with two species of elephant, E.primigenius and E. antiquus,
two, also, of rhinoceros, R. tichorhinus and R. hemitcecus
(Falc.), at least one species of hippopotamus, the cave-bear,
cave-lion, and cave-hyaena, various bovine, equine, and cer
vine animals now extinct, and many smaller carnivora,
rodentia, and insectivora. While these were slowly passing
away, the musk buffalo, reindeer, and other arctic species,
which have survived to our times, were retreating northwards,
from the valleys of the Thames and Seine, to their present
more arctic haunts.
The human skeletons of the Belgian caverns of times co
eval with the mammoth and other extinct mammalia, do not
betray any signs of a marked departure in their structure,
whether of skull or limb, from the modern standard of certain
living races of the human family. As to the remarkable
Neanderthal skeleton (Ch. V. p. 75), it is at present too iso
lated and exceptional, and its age too uncertain, to warrant
us in relying on its abnormal and ape-like characters, as
bearing on the question whether the farther back we
trace Man into the past, the more we shall find him approach
in bodily conformation to those species of the anthropoid
quadrumana which are most akin to him in structure.
In the descriptions* already given of the geographical
changes which the British Isles have undergone since the
commencement of the glacial period (as illustrated by several
maps, pp. 276-279), it has been shown that there must have
been a free communication by land between the Continent
and these islands, and between the several islands themselves,
within the Post-pliocene epoch, in order to account for the
Germanic fauna and flora having migrated into every part of
the area, as well as for the Scandinavian plants and animals
376 MIGRATIONS OF MAN FROM THE CONTINENT. CHAP. xix.
to have retreated into the higher mountains. During some
part of the Post-pliocene ages, the large pachyderms and ac
companying beasts of prey, now extinct, wandered from the
Continent to England ; but whether the junction of France
and any part of the British Isles was as late as the period of
the gravels of St. Acheul, or the era of those engulfed rivers
which, in the basin of the Meuse, near Liege, swept into many
a rent and cavern the bones of Man and of the mammoth
and cave-bear, is still doubtful. There have been vast geo
graphical revolutions since the times alluded to, and oscilla
tions of land, during which the English Channel, which can
be shown b} T the Pagham erratics, and the old Brighton
beach (p. 280), to be of very ancient origin, may have been
more than once laid dry and again submerged since it ori
ginated. During some one of these phases, Man may have
crossed over, whether by land or in canoes, or even on the
ice of a frozen sea (as Mr. Prestwich has hinted), for the
winters of the period of the higher level "gravels of the valley
of the Somme were intensely cold.
The primitive people, who coexisted with the elephant and
rhinoceros in the valley of the Ouse at Bedford, and who
made use of flint tools of the Amiens type, certainly in
habited part of England which had already emerged from
the waters of the glacial sea, and the fabricators of the flint
tools of Hoxne, in Suffolk, were also, as we have seen, post
glacial. We may likewise presume, that the people of post-
pliocene date, who have left their memorials in the valley of
the Thames, were of corresponding antiquity, posterior to the
boulder clay, but anterior to the time when the rivers of that
region had settled into their present channels.
The vast distance of time which separated the origin of
the higher and lower level gravels of the valley of the Somme,
both of them rich in flint implements of similar shape (al
though those of oval form predominate in the newer gravels),
CHAP. xix. RATE OF PROGRESS IN BARBAROUS AGES. 377
leads to the conclusion that the state of the arts in those
early times remained stationary for almost indefinite periods.
There may, however, have been different degrees of civi
lisation, and in the art of fabricating flint tools, of which we
cannot easily detect the signs in the first age of stone, and
some contemporary tribes may have been considerably in
advance of others. Those hunters, for example, who feasted
on the rhinoceros and buried their dead with funeral rites
at Aurignac, may have been less barbarous than the savages
of St. Acheul, as some of their weapons and utensils have
been thought to imply. To a European who looks down
from a great eminence on the products of the humble arts
of the aborigines of all times and countries, the knives and
arrows of the Red Indian of North America, the hatchets of
the native Australian, the tools found in the ancient Swiss
lake-dwellings, or those of the Danish kitchen-middens and
of St. Acheul, seem nearly all alike in rudeness, and very
uniform in general character. The slowness of the progress
of the arts of savage life is manifested by the fact, that the
earlier instruments of bronze were modelled on the exact plan
of the stone tools of the preceding age, although such shapes
would never have been chosen, had metals been known from
the first. The reluctance or incapacity of savage tribes to
adopt new inventions, has been shown in the East, by their
continuing to this day to use the same stone implements as
their ancestors, after that mighty empires, where the use of
metals in the arts was well known, had flourished for three
thousand years in their neighbourhood.
We see in our own times, that the rate of progress in the
arts and sciences proceeds in a geometrical ratio as knowledge
increases, and so, when we carry back our retrospect into the
past, we must be prepared to find the signs of retardation
augmenting in a like geometrical ratio ; so that the progress of
a thousand years at a remote period, may correspond to that of
378 NOTION OF DEGENERACY CONTROVERTED. CHAP. xix.
a century in modern times, and in ages still more remote
Man would more and more resemble the brutes in that
attribute which causes one generation exactly to imitate in
all its ways the generation which preceded it.
The extent to which even a considerably advanced state of
civilisation may become fixed and stereotyped for ages, is the
wonder of Europeans who travel in the East. One of my
friends declared to me, that whenever the natives expressed
to him a wish ' that he might live a thousand years,' the idea
struck him as by no means extravagant, seeing that if he
were doomed to sojourn for ever among them, he could only
hope to exchange in ten centuries as many ideas, and to witness
as much progress, as he could do at home in half a century.
It has sometimes happened that one nation has been con
quered by another less civilised though more warlike, or that,
during social and political revolutions, people have retrograded
in knowledge. In such cases, the traditions of earlier ages, or
of some higher and more educated caste which has been
destroyed, may give rise to the notion of degeneracy from a
primeval state of superior intelligence, or of science super-
naturally communicated. But had the original stock of
mankind been really endowed with such superior intellectual
powers, and with inspired knowledge, and had possessed the
same improvable nature as their posterity, the point of ad
vancement which they would have reached ere this would
have been immeasurably higher. We cannot ascertain at
present the limits, whether of the beginning or the end, of
the first stone period, when Man coexisted with the extinct
mammalia, but that it was of great duration we cannot
doubt. During those ages there would have been time for
progress of which we can Scarcely form a conception, and
very different would have been the character of the works of
art which we should now be endeavouring to interpret, those
relics which we are now disinterring from the old gravel-pits
CHAP. xix. OPINIONS OF tllE GREEKS AND ROMANS. 379
of St. Acheul, or from the Liege caves. In them, or in the
upraised bed of the Mediterranean, on the south coast of
Sardinia, instead of the rudest pottery or flint tools, so ir
regular in form as to cause the unpractised eye to doubt
whether they afford unmistakable evidence of design, we
should now be finding sculptured forms, surpassing in beauty
the master-pieces of Phidias or Praxiteles; lines of buried
railways or electric telegraphs, from which the best engineers
of our day might gain invaluable hints ; astronomical instru
ments and microscopes of more advanced construction than
any known in Europe, and other indications of perfection in
the arts and sciences, such as the nineteenth century has not
yet witnessed. Still farther would the triumphs of inventive
genius be found to have been carried, when the later deposits,
now assigned to the ages of bronze and iron, were formed.
Vainly should we be straining our imaginations to guess
the possible uses and meaning of such relics machines, per
haps, for navigating the air or exploring the depths of the
ocean, or for calculating arithmetical problems, beyond the
wants or even the conception of living mathematicians.
The opinion entertained generally by the classical writers
of Greece and Rome, that Man in the first stage of his ex
istence was but just removed from the brutes, is faithfully
expressed by Horace in his celebrated lines, which begin
Quum prorepserunt primis animalia terris. Sat., lib. i. 3, 99.
The picture of transmutation given in these verses, however
severe and contemptuous the strictures lavishly bestowed on
it by Christian commentators, accords singularly with the
train of thought which the modern doctrine of progressive
development has encouraged.
4 When animals,' he says, ' first crept forth from the newly
formed earth, a dumb and filthy herd, they fought for acorns
380 EARLY EGYPTIAN CIVILISATION CHAP. xix.
and lurking-places with their nails and fists, then with clubs,
and at last with arms, which, taught by experience, they had
forged. They then invented names for things, and words
to express their thoughts, after which they began to desist
from war, to fortify cities, and enact laws.' They who in
later times have embraced a similar theory, have been led
to it by no deference to the opinions of their pagan prede
cessors, but rather in spite of very strong prepossessions in
favour of an opposite hypothesis, namely, that of the superi
ority of their original progenitors, of whom they believe
themselves to be the corrupt and degenerate descendants.
So far as they are guided by palaeontology, they arrive
at this result by an independent course of reasoning; but they
have been conducted partly to the same goal as the ancients,
by ethnological considerations common to both, or by re
flecting in what darkness the infancy of every nation is
enveloped, and that true history and chronology are the
creation, as it were, of yesterday. Thus the first Olympiad
is generally regarded as the earliest date on which we can
rely, in the past annals of mankind, only 772 years before
the Christian era.
When we turn from historical records to ancient monu
ments and inscriptions, none of them seem to claim a higher
antiquity than about fifteen centuries, B.C. Those now extant
of Borne, Etruria, Greece, Judaea, and Assyria, carry us back no
farther into the history of past ages than the temples, obelisks,
cities, tombs, and pyramids of Egypt, and the exact date of
these last, after they have been studied with so much patience
and sagacity for centuries, remains uncertain and obscure.
Nevertheless, by showing the advanced point which the civili
sation of mankind had reached in the valley of the Nile, in
times which were regarded by the Greeks, more than two
thousand years ago, as lost in the night of ages, we may form
some estimate of the minimum of time which a people such
CHAP. xix. AND ITS DATES. 381
as the Egyptians must have required to emerge slowly from
primeval barbarism, and reach, long before the first Olympiad,
so high a degree of power and civilisation.
Sir Greorge Come wall Lewis, in his recent e Historical Sur
vey of the Astronomy of the Ancients,' * says, that ' taking
into consideration all the evidence respecting the buildings
and great works of Egypt extant in the time of Herodotus, we
may come to the conclusion that there is no sufficient ground
for placing them at a date anterior to the building of the
temple of Solomon, or 1012, B.C.' The same author has
reminded us that Homer, in the Iliad, speaks of ' Egyptian
Thebes, with its hundred gates, through each of which two
hundred chariots went forth to battle,' and that we may form
an idea of the size which the great poet intended to ascribe to
Thebes in Egypt, from the fact that Thebes in Bceotia was
supposed to have only seven gates. Homer is believed to
have flourished about eight centuries before the Christian
era. At so early a period, therefore, the magnificence of
Thebes had attracted the attention of the Greeks. But in
the opinion of Egyptologists, there were great cities of still
older date than Thebes ; as, for example, Memphis, which,
from the names of the kings on the oldest monuments now
extant there as compared with those in Thebes, is inferred
to go back to remoter times. As to the speculations of Ari
stotle, in his 'Meteorics' (1, 14), that Memphis was probably
the less ancient of the two, because the ground on which it
stood was nearer the Mediterranean, and would therefore, at
a later period, be first redeemed from a watery and marshy
state, this argument, if it were available, would give an
extremely high antiquity to both cities, seeing the small
progress which the delta and alluvial deposits of the Nile
have made in the last two or three thousand years. It is only
* London, 1862, p. 440.
382 EAELY EGYPTIAN DATES CHAP. xix.
in bays like that of Menzaleh, that any great amount of new
land has been gained, the general advance of the delta being
checked by a strong current of the Mediterranean, which,
running from the west, sweeps eastward the sediment brought
down by the great river, and prevents the land from en
croaching farther on the sea. The slow subsidence also of
the land is another cause which checks the advance of the
delta, and the raising and desiccation of the inland country.
Aristotle remarks, that as Homer does not mention Mem
phis, the city either had no existence in the time of the poet,
or was less considerable than Thebes.
This observation is no doubt just, so far as regards the com
parative splendour of the two cities, the one the metropolis
of Upper and the other of Lower Egypt in former times.
But it has no bearing whatever on the question of the
existence of Memphis, for Thebes is only alluded to inciden
tally as the grandest city known to Homer. Achilles is
made to exclaim, 'Not though you were to offer me the
wealth of Egyptian Thebes, with its hundred gates,' &c. &c.,
' would I stir ; ' * and the allusion to Thebes in the Odyssey is
equally a passing one. f If a work like Strabo's ' Geography,'
compiled in the days of Homer, had come down to us, and
Thebes had been fully described without any mention being
made of Memphis, we might then have inferred the non-
existence of the latter city at that period.
Great cities, says Sir Gr. C. Lewis, and temples, and
pyramids may be erected during a small number of cen
turies, when despotic monarch s can command the services of
large armies in peace, and some Oriental monarchs are known
in historical times to have been possessed with a mania for
constructing huge edifices to please their own fancies. But
making every allowance for such occasional displays of
* Iliad, ix. 381. | Odyssey, iv. 127.
CHAP. xix. COMPARED WITH THOSE OF STONE PERIODS. 383
caprice and magnificence, we cannot contemplate the average
size and number of the pyramids now extant (upwards of
forty large and small), to say nothing of the monuments and
inscriptions, without supposing them to have been the work
of a long succession of generations. Long before the time of
Homer, when Thebes had already attained such wealth and
consequence, an indigenous civilisation must have been
slowly matured, with its peculiar forms of worship, splendid
religious ceremonial, the practice of embalming the dead, a
peculiar style of sculpture and architecture, hieroglyphics,
and the custom of embanking the great river to prevent the
sites of towns and cities from being overflowed by the annual
inundation.
In the temples are found pictorial representations of
battles and sieges, processions in which trophies are carried
and prisoners led captive; and if it be true, as Sir GK C.
Lewis contends, that throughout the historical period the
Egyptians were a peaceful and never a conquering people,*
the wars to which these monuments would then refer must
be so ancient as to confer on the Egyptians far higher claims
to antiquity than those advanced by Bunsen and Lepsius.
Nevertheless, geologically speaking, and in reference to
the date of the first age of stone, these records of the valley
of the Nile may be called extremely modern. Wherever
excavations have been made into the Nile mud underlying
the foundations of Egyptian cities, as, for example, sixty
feet below the peristyle of the obelisk of Heliopolis, and
generally in the alluvial plains of the Nile, the bones met
with belong to living species of quadrupeds, such as the
camel, dromedary, dog, ox, and pig, without, as yet, the
association in any single instance of the teeth or bone of a lost
species.
In like manner in all the countries bordering the Medi-
* Lewis, Historical Survey. &c,, p. 351.
334 EARLY EGYPTIAN DATES. CHAP. xix.
terranean, whether in Algeria, Spain, the south of France,
Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, Sicily, or the islands of the Medi
terranean generally, wherever the bones of extinct mammalia,
such as the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus, have been
found, it is not in the modern deltas of rivers or in the
alluvial plains, now overflowed when the waters are high,
that such fossil remains present themselves, but in situations
corresponding to the ancient gravels of the valley of the
Somme, in which the bones of the mammoth and the oldest
type of flint implements occur.
If the Egyptian monarch, therefore, who sent Hanno to
circumnavigate Africa, or some earlier king than he, had com
manded his admiral to sail past the Pillars of Hercules, and
then northwards as far as he could penetrate, leaving, before he
set out on his return, some monument to commemorate to
after ages the Ultima Thule of his expedition at the most
northern point reached by him, and if we had now discovered
an obelisk of granite left by him at that era on the platform of
St. Acheul, near Amiens, its foundations might well have
occupied the precise position which the Grallo-Eoman tombs
now hold, as shown in fig. 21 a (p. 138). If they had dug
deep enough to exhume some teeth of the elephant, they
might easily have seen that they differed from the teeth of their
African species, and were distinct, like many other accom
panying bones, from the animals then inhabiting the valley
of the Somme, or that of the Nile. The flint implements
would then have lain buried in the old gravel as now, and
the only geological distinction between those times and ours
would be a diminished thickness of peat bordering the
Somme, the upper layers of which would not contain, as
now, Koman antiquities, and some beds below, in which
Celtic hatchets now occur, would have been wanting; but,
with this slight exception, the valley would have worn the
same aspect as at the era when the Eomans subdued Gaul.
CHAP, xx, ANTIQUITY OF EXISTING RACES OF MANKIND. 335
CHAPTEE XX.
THEORIES OF PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION.
ANTIQUITY AND PERSISTENCY IN CHARACTER OF THE EXISTING RACES
OF MANKIND THEORY OF THEIR UNITY OF ORIGIN CONSIDERED
BEARING OF THE DIVERSITY OF RACES ON THE DOCTRINE OF TRANS
MUTATION DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING THE TERMS ' SPECIES ' AND 'RACE*
LAMARCK'S INTRODUCTION OF THE ELEMENT OF TIME INTO THE
DEFINITION OF A SPECIES HIS THEORY OF VARIATION AND PRO-
GRESSION OBJECTIONS TO HIS THEORY, HOW FAR ANSWERED
ARGUMENTS OF MODERN WRITERS IN FAVOUR OF PROGRESSION IN THE
ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE WORLD THE OLD LANDMARKS SUPPOSED TO
INDICATE THE FIRST APPEARANCE OF MAN, AND OF DIFFERENT
CLASSES OF ANIMALS, FOUND TO BE ERRONEOUS YET THE THEORY
OF AN ADVANCING SERIES OF ORGANIC BEINGS NOT INCONSISTENT WITH
FACTS EARLIEST KNOWN FOSSIL MAMMALIA OF LOW GRADE NO
VERTEBRATA AS YET DISCOVERED IN THE OLDEST FOSSILIFEROUS ROCKS
OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF PROGRESSION CONSIDERED CAUSES
OF THE POPULARITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF PROGRESSION AS COMPARED
TO THAT OF TRANSMUTATION.
TTTHEN speaking in a former work of the distinct races of
i mankind,* I remarked that, ' if all the leading varie
ties of the human family sprang originally from a single pair,'
(a doctrine, to which then, as now, I could see no valid ob
jection,) c a much greater lapse of time was required for the
slow and gradual formation of such races as the Caucasian,
Mongolian, and Negro, than was embraced in any of the
popular systems of chronology.'
In confirmation of the high antiquity of two of these, I
referred to pictures on the walls of ancient temples in Egypt,
in which, a thousand years or more before the Christian era,
* Principles of Geology, 7th ed., p. 637, 1847 ; see also 9th ed., p. 660.
C C
386 ANTIQUITY OF EXISTING EACES OF MANKIND. CHAP. xx.
'the Negro and Caucasian physiognomies were portrayed
as faithfully, and in as strong contrast, as if the likenesses of
these races had been taken yesterday.' In relation to the
same subject, I dwelt on the slight modification which the
Negro has undergone, after having been transported from
the tropics, and settled for more than two centuries in the
temperate climate of Virginia. I therefore concluded that,
( if the various races were all descended from a single pair, we
must allow for a vast series of antecedent ages, in the course
of which the long-continued influence of external circum
stances gave rise to peculiarities increased in many successive
generations, and at length fixed by hereditary transmission.'
So long as physiologists continued to believe that man had
not existed on the earth above six thousand years, they
might, with good reason, withhold their assent from the
doctrine of a unity of origin of so many distinct races ; but
the difficulty becomes less and less, exactly in proportion as
we enlarge our ideas of the lapse of time during which dif
ferent communities may have spread slowly, and become
isolated, each exposed for ages to a peculiar set of conditions,
whether of temperature, or food, or danger, or ways of living.
The law of the geometrical rate of the increase of population
which causes it alwa , s to press hard on the means of subsist
ence, would ensure the migration, in various directions, of off
shoots from the society first formed abandoning the area where
they had multiplied. But when they had gradually penetrated
to remote regions by land or water, drifted sometimes by
storms and currents in canoes to an unknown shore, barriers
of mountains, deserts, or seas, which oppose no obstacle to
mutual intercourse between civilised nations, would ensure the
complete isolation for tens or thousands of centuries of tribes
in a primitive state of barbarism.
Some modern ethnologists, in accordance with the philoso
phers of antiquity, have assumed that men at first fed on the
CHAP. XX. THEOKY OF THEIR UNITY OF ORIGIN CONSIDERED. 387
fruits of the earth, before even a stone implement or the
simplest form of canoe had been invented. They may, it is
said, have begun their career in some fertile island in the
tropics, where the warmth of the air was such, that no
clothing was needed, and where there were no wild beasts to
endanger their safety. But as soon as their numbers in
creased, they would be forced to migrate into regions less
secure and blest with a less genial climate. Contests would
soon arise for the possession of the most fertile lands, where
game or pasture abounded, and their energies and inventive
powers would be called forth, so that, at length, they would
make progress in the arts.
But as ethnologists have failed, as yet, to trace back the
history of any one race to the area where it originated, some
zoologists of eminence have declared their belief, that the
different races, whether they be three, five, twenty, or a much
greater number, (for on this point there is an endless diver
sity of opinion,*) have all been primordial creations, having
from the first been stamped with the characteristic features,
mental and bodily, by which they are now distinguished,
except where intermarriage has given rise to mixed or hy
brid races. Were we to admit, say they, a unity of origin of
such strongly marked varieties as the Negro and European,
differing as they do in colour and bodily constitution, each
fitted for distinct climates, and exhibiting some marked
peculiarities in their osteological, and even, in some details
of cranial and cerebral conformation, as well as in their
average intellectual endowments (see above, p. 91), if, in
spite of the fact that all these attributes have been faithfully
handed down unaltered for hundreds of generations, we
are to believe that, in the course of time, they have all
diverged from one common stock, how shall we resist the
* See Transactions of Ethnological Society, vol. i. 1861.
C c 2
3S8 DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING CHAP. xx.
arguments of the transmutationist, who contends that all
closely allied species of animals and plants have in like
manner sprung from a common parentage, albeit that for
the last three or four thousand years they may have been
persistent in character ? Where are we to stop, unless we
make our stand at once on the independent creation of those
distinct human races, the history of which is better known
to us than that of any of the inferior animals ?
So long as Geology had not lifted up a part of the veil
which formerly concealed from the naturalist the history of
the changes which the animate creation had undergone in
times immediately antecedent to the Recent period, it was
easy to treat these questions as too transcendental, or as
lying too far beyond the domain* of positive science to
require serious discussion. But it is no longer possible to
restrain curiosity from attempting to pry into the relations
which connect the present state of the animal and vegetable
worlds, as well as of the various races of mankind, with the
state of the fauna and flora which immediately preceded.
In the very outset of the enquiry, we are met with the
difficulty of defining what we mean by the terms ' species ' and
e race ; ' and the surprise of the unlearned is usually great,
when they discover how wide is the difference of opinion now
prevailing as to the significance of words in such familiar
use. But, in truth, we can come to no agreement as to such
definitions, unless we have previously made up our minds on
some of the most momentous of all the enigmas with which
the human intellect ever attempted to grapple.
It is now thirty years since I gave an analysis in the first
edition of my 'Principles of Greology ' (vol. ii. 1832) of the
views which had been put forth by Lamarck, in the be
ginning of the century, on this subject. In that interval
the progress made in zoology and botany, both in aug
menting the number of known animals and plants, and in
CHAP. xx. THE TERMS ( SPECIES ' AND ( RACE.' 389
studying their physiology and geographical distribution, and,
above all, in examining and describing fossil species, is so
vast, that the additions made to our knowledge probably
exceed all that was previously known ; and what Lamarck then
foretold has come to pass; the more new forms have been
multiplied, the less are we able to decide what we mean by a
variety, and what by a species. In fact, zoologists and
botanists are not only more at a loss than ever how to
define a species, but even to determine whether it has any
real existence in nature, or is a mere abstraction of the
human intellect, some contending that it is constant within
certain narrow and impassable limits of variability, others
that it is capable of indefinite and endless modification.
Before I attempt to explain a great step, which has
recently been made by Mr. Darwin and his fellow-labourers
in this field of enquiry, I think it useful to recapitulate in
this place some of the leading features of Lamarck's system,
without attempting to adjust the claims of some of his con
temporaries (GreofFroy St. Hilaire in particular) to share in
the credit of some of his original speculations.
From the time of Linnaeus to the commencement of the
present century, it seemed a sufficient definition of the term
species to say, that c a species consisted of individuals all
resembling each other, and reproducing their like by genera
tion.' But Lamarck, after having first studied botany with
success, had then turned his attention to conchology, and soon
became aware that in the newer (or tertiary) strata of the
earth's crust there were a multitude of fossil species of shells,
some of them identical with living ones, others simply
varieties of the living, and which, as such, were entitled to
be designated, according to the ordinary rules of classifica
tion, by the same names. He also observed that other shells
were so nearly allied to living forms, that it was difficult not
to suspect that they had been connected by a common bond
390 LAMARCK'S THEOEY CHAP. xx.
of descent. He therefore proposed that the element of
time should enter into the definition of a species, and that it
should run thus : ' A species consists of individuals all re
sembling each other, and reproducing their like by genera
tion, so long as the surrounding conditions do not undergo
changes sufficient to cause their habits, characters, and forms
to vary? He came at last to the conclusion, that none of the
animals and plants now existing were primordial creations,
but were all derived from pre-existing forms, which,' after
they may have gone on for indefinite ages reproducing their
like, had, at length, by the influence of alterations in climate
and in the animate world, been made to vary gradually,
and adapt themselves to new circumstances, some of them
deviating, in the course of ages, so far from their original
type as to have claims to be regarded as new species.
In support of these views, he referred to wild and culti
vated plants, and to wild and domesticated animals, pointing
out how their colour, form, structure, physiological attri
butes, and even instincts, were gradually modified by expo
sure to new soils and climates, new enemies, modes of
subsistence, arid kinds of food.
Nor did he omit to notice that the newly acquired peculi
arities may be inherited by the offspring for an indefinite series
of generations, whether they be brought about naturally, as
when a species, on the extreme verge of its geographical range,
comes into competition with new antagonists, and is subjected
to new physical conditions; or artificially, as when, by the
act of the breeder or horticulturist, peculiar varieties of form
or disposition are selected.
But Lamarck taught not only that species had been con
stantly undergoing changes from one geological period to
another, but that there also had been a progressive advance
of the organic world from the earliest to the latest times, from
beings of the simplest to those of more and more complex struc-
CHAP. XX. OF VARIATION AND PROGRESSION. 391
ture, and from the lowest instincts up to the highest, and,
finally, from brute intelligence to the reasoning powers of Man.
The improvement in the grade of being had been slow and
continuous, and the human race itself was at length evolved
out of the most highly organised and endowed of the inferior
mammalia.
In order to explain how, after an indefinite lapse of ages, so
many of the lowest grades, of animal or plant, still abounded,
he imagined that the germs or rudiments of living things,
which he called monads, were continually coming into the
world, and that there were different kinds of these monads for
each primary division of the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
This last hypothesis does not seem essentially different from
the old doctrine of equivocal or spontaneous generation ; it
is wholly unsupported by any modern experiments or observa
tion, and therefore affords us no aid whatever in speculating
on the commencement of vital phenomena on the earth.
Some of the laws which govern the appearance of new
varieties were clearly pointed out by Lamarck. He re
marked, for example, that as the muscles of the arm become
strengthened by exercise or enfeebled by disuse, some organs
may in this way, in the course of time, become entirely
obsolete, and others previously weak become strong and
play a new or more leading part in the organisation of a
species. And so with instincts, where animals experience new
dangers they become more cautious and cunning, and trans
mit these acquired faculties to their posterity. But not
satisfied with such legitimate speculations, the French
philosopher conceived that by repeated acts of volition
animals might acquire new organs and attributes, and that
in plants, which could not exert -a will of their own, certain
subtle fluids or organising forces might operate so as to
work out analogous effects.
After commenting on these purely imaginary causes, I
392 OBJECTIONS TO LAMARCK'S THEORY, CHAP. xx.
pointed out in 1832, as the two great flaws in Lamarck's
attempt to explain the origin of species, first, that he had
failed to adduce a single instance of the initiation of a new
organ in any species of animal or plant ; and secondly, that
variation, whether taking place in the course of nature or
assisted artificially by the breeder and horticulturist, had
never yet gone so far as to produce two races sufficiently
remote from each other in physiological constitution as to be
sterile when intermarried, or, if fertile, only capable of pro
ducing sterile hybrids, &c.*
To this objection Lamarck would, no doubt, have answered
that there had not been time for bringing about so great an
amount of variation ; for when Cuvier and some other of his
contemporaries appealed to the embalmed animals and plants
taken from Egyptian tombs, some of them 3,000 years old,
which had not experienced in that long period the slightest
modification in their specific characters, he replied that the
climate and soil of the valley of the Nile had not varied in the
interval, and that there was therefore no reason for expecting
that we should be able to detect any change in the fauna and
flora. ' But if,' he went on to say, ' the physical geography,
temperature, and other conditions of life, had been altered in
Egypt as much as we know from geology has happened in
other regions, some of the same animals and plants would
have deviated so far from their pristine types as to be
thought entitled to take rank as new and distinct species.'
Although I cited this answer of Lamarck, in my account
of his theory,f I did not, at the time, fully appreciate the
deep conviction which it displays of the slow manner in
which geological changes have taken place, and the insigni
ficance of thirty or forty centuries in the history of a species,
and that, too, at a period when very narrow views were
* Principles of Geology, 1st ed., vol. ii. ch. ii.
f Ibid., p. 587. 1832.
CHAP. XX. HOW FAK ANSWEBED. 393
entertained of the extent of past time by most of the ablest
geologists, and when great revolutions of the earth's crust,
and its inhabitants, were generally attributed to sudden and
violent catastrophes.
While, in 1832, 1 argued against Lamarck's doctrine of the
gradual transmutation of one species into another, I agreed
with him in believing that the system of changes now in
progress in the organic world would afford, when fully
understood, a complete key to the interpretation of all the
vicissitudes of the living creation in past ages. I contended
against the doctrine, then very popular, of the sudden destruc
tion of vast multitudes of species, and the abrupt ushering
into the world of new batches of plants and animals.
I endeavoured to sketch out (and it was, I believe, the first
systematic attempt to accomplish such a task) the laws
which govern the extinction of species, with a view of show
ing that the slow, but ceaseless variations, now in progress
in physical geography, together with the migration of plants
and animals into new regions, must, in the course of ages,
give rise to the occasional loss of some of them, and eventually
cause an entire fauna and flora to die out ; also, that we must
infer, from geological data, that the places thus left vacant
from time to time, are filled up without delay by new forms,
adapted to new conditions, sometimes by immigration from
adjoining provinces, sometimes by new creations. Among
the many causes of extinction enumerated by me, were the
power of hostile species, diminution of food, mutations in
climate, the conversion of land into sea, and of sea into land,
&c. I firmly opposed Brocchi's hypothesis, of a decline in
the vital energy of each species;* maintaining that there
was every reason to believe that the reproductive powers of
the last surviving representatives of a species were as
* Principles of Geology, 1st ed. ch. viii. vol. ii. ; and 9th ed. p. 668.
394 FIRST APPEARANCE OF NEW SPECIES CHAP. xx.
vigorous as those of their predecessors, and that they were as
capable, under favourable circumstances, of repeopling the
earth with their kind. The manner in which some species
are now becoming scarce and dying out, one after the other,
appeared to me to favour the doctrine of the fixity of the
specific character, showing a want of pliancy and capability
of varying, which ensured their annihilation whenever changes
adverse to their well-being occurred ; time not being allowed
for such a transformation as might be conceived capable of
adapting them to the new circumstances, and of converting
them into what naturalists would call, new species.*
But while rejecting transmutation, I was equally opposed
to the popular theory that the creative power had diminished
in energy, or that it had been in abeyance ever since man had
entered upon the scene. That a renovating force, which had
been in full operation for millions of years, should cease to
act while the causes of extinction were still in full activity, or
even intensified by the accession of man's destroying power,
seemed to me in the highest degree improbable. The only
point on which I doubted was, whether the force might not
be intermittent instead of being, as Lamarck supposed, in
ceaseless operation. Might not the births of new species, like
the deaths of old ones, be sudden ? Might they not still es
cape our observation ? If the coming in of one new species,
and the loss of one other which had endured for ages, should
take place annually, still, assuming that there are a million
of animals and plants living on the globe, it would require,
I observed, a million of years to bring about a complete
revolution in the fauna and flora. In that case, I imagined
that, although the first appearance of a new form might be as
abrupt as the disappearance of an old one, yet naturalists
might never yet have witnessed the first entrance on the stage
* Laws of Extinction, Principles chap. v. to xi. inclusive ; and 9th ed.
of Geology, 1st ed. 1832, vol. ii. ch. xxxvii. to xlii. inclusive. 1853.
CHAP. XX. IN THE ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE WOKLD. 395
of a large and conspicuous animal or plant, and as to the
smaller kinds, many of them may be conceived to have stolen
in unseen, and to have spread gradually over a wide area, like
species migrating into new provinces.*
It may now be useful to offer some remarks on the very
different reception which the twin branches of Lamarck's
development theory, namely, progression and transmutation,
have met with, and to enquire into the causes of the popu
larity of the one, and the great unpopularity of the other.
We usually test the value of a scientific hypothesis by the
number and variety of the phenomena of which it offers a
fair or plausible explanation. If transmutation, when thus
tested, has decidedly the advantage over progression, and yet
is comparatively in disfavour, we may reasonably suspect that
its reception is retarded, not so much by its own inherent de
merits, as by some apprehended consequences which it is
supposed to involve, and which run counter to our precon
ceived opinions.
Theory of Progression.
In treating of this question, I shall begin with the doctrine
of progression, a concise statement of which, so far as it relates
to the animal kingdom, was thus given twelve years ago by
Professor Sedgwick, in the preface to his Discourse on the
Studies of the University of Cambridge.
( There are traces,' he says, 'among the old deposits of the
earth of an organic progression amdng the successive forms of
life. They are to be seen in the absence of mammalia in the
older, and their very rare appearance in the newer secondary
groups; in the diffusion of warm-blooded quadrupeds (fre
quently of unknown genera) in the older tertiary system,
and in their great abundance (and frequently of known
* Principles of Geology, 1st ed. 1832, vol. ii. ch. xi. ; and 9th ed. p. 706.
396 THEORY OP PROGRESSION CHAP. xx.
genera) in the upper portions of the same series ; and lastly,
in the recent appearance of Man on the surface of the earth.'
6 This historical development,' continues the same author,
6 of the forms and functions of organic life during successive
epochs, seems to mark a gradual evolution of creative power,
manifested by a gradual ascent towards a higher type of being.'
4 But the elevation of the fauna of successive periods was not
made by transmutation, but by creative additions ; and it is
by watching these additions that we get some insight into
Nature's true historical progress, and learn that there was a
time when Cephalopoda were the highest types of animal life,
the primates of this world ; that Fishes next took the lead,
then Eeptiles; and that during the secondary period they were
anatomically raised far above any forms of the reptile class
now living in the world. Mammals were added next, until
Nature became what she now is, by the addition of Man.' *
Although in the half century which has elapsed between the
time of Lamarck and the publication of the above summary,
new discoveries have caused geologists to assign a higher an
tiquity both to Man and the oldest fossil mammalia, fish, and
reptiles than formerly, yet the generalisation, as laid down
by the Woodwardian Professor, still holds good in all essential
particulars.
The progressive theory was propounded in the following
terms by the late Hugh Miller in his ' Footprints of the
Creator.'
( It is of itself an extraordinary fact without reference to
other considerations, that the order adopted by Cuvier in his
" Animal Kingdom," as that in which the four great classes of
vertebrate animals, when marshalled according to their rank
and standing, naturally range, should be also that in which
they occur in order of time. The brain, which bears an
* Professor Sedgwick's Discourse Cambridge, Preface to 5th ed. pp. xliv.
on the Studies of the University of cliv. ecxvi. 1850.
CHAP. xx. NOT INCONSISTENT WITH FACTS. 397
average proportion to the spinal cord of not more than t\fo
to one, comes first, it is the brain of the fish ; that which
bears to the spinal cord an average proportion of two-and-a-
half to one succeeded it, it is the brain of the reptile ; then
came the brain averaging as three to one, it is that of the
bird. Next in succession came the brain that averages as
four to one, it is that of the animal ; and last of all there
appeared a brain that averages as twenty-three to one,
reasoning, calculating Man had come upon the scene.'*
M. Agassiz, in his Essay on Classification, has devoted a
chapter to the * Parallelism between the Geological Succession
of Animals and Plants and their present relative Standing ; '
in which he has expressed a decided opinion that, within the
limits of the orders of each great class, there is a coincidence
between their relative rank in organisation and the order
of succession of their representatives in time.f
Professor Owen, in his Palaeontology, has advanced similar
views, and has remarked, in regard to the vertebrata, that there
is much positive as well as negative evidence in support of
the doctrine of an advance in the scale of being, from ancient
to more modern geological periods. We observe, for example,
in the triassic, oolitic, and cretaceous strata, not only an
absence of placental mammalia, but the presence of in
numerable reptiles, some of large size, terrestrial and aquatic,
herbivorous and prsedaceous, fitted to perform the functions
now discharged by the mammalia.
The late Professor Bronn, of Heidelberg, after passing in
review more than 24,000 fossil animals and plants, which he
had classified and referred each to their geological position
in his ( Index Palseontologicus,' came to the conclusion that,
in the course of time, there had been introduced into the
* Footprints of the Creator, p. 283. tory of United States, Part I. Essay
Edinburgh, 1849. on Classification, p. 108.
f Contributions to Natural His-
398 THEORY OF PROGRESSION CHAP. XX.
earth more and more highly organised types of animal and
vegetable life ; the modern species being, on the whole, more
specialised, i.e., having separate organs, or parts of the body,
to perform different functions, which, in the earlier periods
and in beings of simpler structure, were discharged in com
mon by a single part or organ.
Professor Adolphe Brongniart, in an essay published in
1849, on the botanical classification and geological distribu
tion of the genera of fossil plants,* arrives at similar results
as to the progress of the vegetable world from the earliest
periods to the present. He does not pretend to trace an
exact historical series from the sea-weed to the fern, or from
the fern again to the conifers and cycads, and lastly, from those
families to the palms and oaks, but he, nevertheless, points
out that the cryptogamic forms, especially the acrogens, pre
dominate among the fossils of the primary formations, the
carboniferous especially, while the gymnosperms or coniferous
and cycadeous plants abound in all the strata, from the Trias
to the Wealden inclusive ; and lastly, the more highly deve
loped angiosperms, both monocotyledonous and dicotyledo
nous, do not become abundant until the tertiary period. It
is a remarkable fact, as he justly observes, that the exogens,
which comprise four-fifths of living plants, a division to which
all our native European trees, except the Conifers, belong,
and which embrace all the Composite, LeguminosaB, Um-
belliferas, Cruciferaa, Heaths, and so many other families, are
wholly unrepresented by any fossils hitherto discovered in the
primary and .secondary formations from the Silurian to the
oolitic inclusive. It is not till we arrive at the cretaceous
period that they begin to appear, sparingly at first, and only
playing a conspicuous part, together with the palms and other
endogens, in the tertiary epoch.
* Tableau des Genres de Vegetaux fossiles, &c. Dictionnaire Universel
d'Histoire Naturelle. Paris, 1849.
CHAP. xx. NOT INCONSISTENT WITH FACTS. 399
When commenting on the eagerness with which the doc
trine of progression was embraced from the close of the last
century to the time when I first attempted, in 1830, to give
some account of the prevailing theories in geology, I observed,
that far too much reliance was commonly placed on the received
dates of the first appearances of certain orders or classes of
animals or plants, such dates being determined by the age of
the stratum in which we then happened to have discovered
the earliest memorials of such types. At that time (1830),
it was taken for granted that Man had not coexisted with the
mammoth and other extinct mammalia, yet now that we
have traced back the signs of his existence to the Post-pliocene
era, and may anticipate the finding of his remains on some
future day in the Pliocene period, the theory of progression
is not shaken ; for we cannot expect to meet with human
bones in the Miocene formations, where all the species and
nearly all the genera of mammalia belong to types widely
differing from those now living ; and had some other rational
being, representing man, then flourished, some signs of his
existence could hardly have escaped unnoticed, in the shape
of implements of stone or metal, more frequent and more
durable than the osseous remains of any of the mammalia.
In the beginning of this century it was one of the
canons of the popular geological creed, that the first warm
blooded quadrupeds which had inhabited this planet were
those derived from the Eocene gypsum of Montmartre in the
suburbs of Paris, almost all of which Cuvier had shown to
belong to extinct genera. This dogma continued in force for
more than a quarter of a century, in spite of the discovery in
1818 of a marsupial quadruped in the Stonesfield strata, a
member of the lower oolite, near Oxford. Some disputed the
authority of Cuvier himself, as to the mammalian character of
the fossil ; others, the accuracy of those who had assigned to it
so ancient a place in the chronological series of rocks. In
400 EARLIEST KNOWN FOSSIL MAMMALIA CHAP. xx.
1832 I pointed out that the occurrence of this single fossil in
the oolite was ( fatal to the theory of successive development,'
as then propounded.* Since that period great additions have
been made to our knowledge of the existence of land quad
rupeds in the olden times. We have ascertained that, in
Eocene strata older than the gypsum of Paris, no less than
four distinct sets of placental mammalia have flourished;
namely, first, those of the Headon series in the Isle of Wight,
from which fourteen species have been procured ; secondly,
those of the antecedent Bagshot and Bracklesham beds, which
have yielded, together with the contemporaneous ' calcaire
grossier ' of Paris, twenty species ; thirdly, the still older beds
of Kyson, near Ipswich, and those of Herne Bay, at the mouth
of the Thames, in which seven species have been found ; and
fourthly, the plastic clay or lignite formation, which has sup
plied ten species.|
We can scarcely doubt that we should already have traced
back the evidence of this class of fossils much farther had not
our enquiries been arrested, first, by the vast gap between
the tertiary and secondary formations, and then by the
marine nature of the cretaceous rocks.
The mammalia next in antiquity, of which we have any
cognisance, are those of the upper oolite of Purbeck, dis
covered between the years 1854 and 1857, and comprising
no less than fourteen species, referable to eight or nine
genera ; one of them, Plagiaulax, considered by Dr. Falconer
to have been a herbivorous marsupial. The whole assem
blage appear, from the joint observations of Professor Owen
and Dr. Falconer, to indicate a low grade of quadruped, pro
bably of the marsupial type. They were, for the most part,
diminutive, the two largest not much exceeding our common
hedgehog and polecat in size.
* Principles of Geology, 2nd ed. f Lyell's Supplement to 5th ed. of
i. 173. Elements. 1857.
CHAP. xx. OF LOW GRADE. 401
Next anterior in age are the mammalia of the Lower Oolite
of Stonesfield, of which four species are known, also very
small, and probably marsupial, with one exception, the
Stereognathus ooliticus, which, according to Professor Owen's
conjecture, may have been a hoofed quadruped and pla-
cental, though, as we have only half of the lower jaw with
teeth, and the molars are unlike any living type, such an
opinion is, of course, hazarded with due caution.
Still older than the above are some fossil quadrupeds of
small size, found in the Upper Trias of Stuttgart in Ger
many, and more lately by Mr. C. Moore in beds of corre
sponding age near Bristol, which are also of a very low grade,
like the living myrmecobius of Australia. Beyond this limit
our knowledge of the highest class of vertebrata does not as yet
extend into the past, but the frequent shifting back of the old
land- marks, nearly all of them once supposed in their turn to
indicate the date of the first appearance of warm-blooded
quadrupeds on this planet, should serve as a warning to us
not to consider the goal at present reached by palaeontology
as one beyond which they who come after us are never
destined to pass.
On the other hand, it may be truly said, in favour of pro
gression, that, after all these discoveries, the doctrine is not
gainsaid, for the less advanced marsupials precede the more
perfect placenta! mammalia in the order of their appear
ance on the earth.
If the three localities where the most ancient mammalia
have been found, Purbeck, Stonesfield, and Stuttgart had
belonged all of them to formations of the same age, we
might well have imagined so limited an area to have been
peopled exclusively with pouched quadrupeds, just as Aus
tralia now is ; while other parts of the globe were inhabited
by placentals, for Australia now supports one hundred and
sixty species of marsupials, while the rest of the continents
D D
402 RETROGRADE MOVEMENT OF REPTILIA. CHAP. xx.
and islands are tenanted by about seventeen hundred species
of mammalia, of which only forty-six are marsupial, namely,
the opossums of North and South America. But the great
difference of age of the strata in each of these three localities
seems to indicate the predominance throughout a vast lapse
of time, (from the era of the Upper Trias to that of the
Purbeck beds,) of a low grade of quadrupeds ; and this per
sistency of similar generic and ordinal types in Europe while
the species were changing, and while the fish, reptiles, and
mollusca were undergoing vast modifications, raises a strong
presumption that there was also a vast extension in space of
the same marsupial forms during that portion of the secondary
epoch which has been termed c the age of reptiles.'
As to the class Eeptilia, some of the orders which pre
vailed when the secondary rocks were formed are confessedly
much higher in their organisation than any of the same
class now living. If the less perfect ophidians, or snakes,
which now abound on the earth had taken the lead in those
ancient days among the land reptiles, and the Deinosaurians
had been contemporary with Man, there can be no doubt
that the progressionist would have seized upon this fact with
unfeigned satisfaction as confirmatory of his views. Now
that the order of succession is precisely reversed, and that
the age of' the Iguanodon was long anterior to that of the
Eocene palseophis and living boa, while the crocodile is in
our own times the highest representative of its class, a retro
grade movement in this important division of the vertebrata
must be admitted. It may perhaps be accounted for by the
power acquired by the placental mammalia, when they
became dominant, a power before which the class of verte
brata next below them, as coming most directly in com
petition with them, may, more than any other, have given
way.
For no less than thirty-four years it had been a received
CHAP. XX. VERTEBRATA UNKNOWN IN OLDEST KOCKS. 403
axiom in palaeontology, that reptiles had never existed before
the Permian or Magnesian limestone period, when at length,
in 1844, this supposed barrier was thrown down, and carbo
niferous reptiles, terrestrial and aquatic, of several genera,
were brought to light ; and discussions are now going on as to
whether some remains of an enaliosaur have not been detected
in the coal of Nova Scotia, and whether certain sandstones,
near Elgin in Scotland, containing the bones of lacertian,
crocodilian, and rhyncosaurian reptiles, may not be referable
to the ' Old Eed ' or Devonian group.
Still, no traces of this class have yet been detected in
rocks as ancient as those in which the oldest fish have been
found.
As to fossil representatives of the ichthyic type, the most
ancient were not supposed, before 1838, to be of a date
anterior to the Coal, but they have since been traced
back, first to the Devonian, and then to the Upper Silurian
rocks. No remains, however, of them or of any vertebrate
animal have yet "been discovered in the Lower Silurian strata,
rich as these are in invertebrate fossils, nor in the still older
primordial zone of Barrande ; so that we seem authorised to
conclude, though not without considerable reserve, that the
vertebrate type was extremely scarce, if not wholly wanting,
in those epochs often spoken of as ( primitive,' but which, if
the Development Theory be true, were probably the last
of a long series of antecedent ages in which living beings
flourished.
As to the Mollusca, which afford the most unbroken series of
geological medals, the highest of that class, the cephalopoda,
abounded in older Silurian times, comprising several hundred
species of chambered univalves. Had there been strong pre
possessions against the progressive theory, it would probably
have been argued that when these cephalopods abounded, and
the siphonated gasteropods were absent, a higher order of
D D 2
404 OBJECTIONS TO THE THEORY OF CHAP. xx.
zoophagous mollusca discharged the functions afterwards per
formed by an inferior order in the secondary, tertiary, and post-
tertiary seas. But I have never seen this view suggested as
adverse to the doctrine of progress, although much stress has
been laid on the fact, that the Silurian brachiopoda, creatures
of a lower grade, formerly discharged the functions of the exist
ing lamellibranchiate bivalves, which are higher in the scale.
It is said truly that the ammonite, orthoceras, and nautilus
of these ancient rocks were of the tetrabranchiate division,
and none of them so highly organised as the belemnite and
other dibranchiate cephalopods which afterwards appeared,
and some of which now flourish in our seas. Therefore, we
may infer that the simplest forms of the cephalopoda took
precedence of the more complex in time. But if wo embrace
this view, we must not forget that there are living cephalo
poda, such as the octopods, which are devoid of any hard
parts, whether external or internal, and which .eould leave
behind them no fossil memorials of their .existence ; so that
we must make a somewhat arbitrary assumption, namely,
that at a remote era, no such dibranchiata were in being, in
order to avail ourselves of this argument in favour of pro
gression. On the other hand, it is true that .in the ' primordial
zone ' of Barrande not even the shell -bearing tetrabranchiates
have yet been discovered.
In regard to plants, although the generalisation, above
cited, of M. Adolphe Brongniart (p. 398) is probably true,
there has been a tendency in the advocates of progression to
push the inferences deducible from known facts, in support of
their favourite dogma, somewhat beyond the limits which the
evidence justifies. Dr. Hooker observes, in his recent intro
ductory essay on the flora of Australia, that it is impossible to
establish a parallel between the successive appearances of
vegetable forms in time, and -their complexity of structure or
specialisation of organs as represented by the successively
CHAP. xx. PROGRESSION CONSIDERED. 405
higher groups in the natural method of classification. He
also adds that the earliest recognisable cryptogams are not
only the highest now existing, but have more highly diffe
rentiated vegetative organs than any subsequently appearing,
and that the dicotyledonous embryo and perfect exogenous
wood, with the highest specialised tissue known (the coniferous
with glandular tissue),, preceded the monocotyledonous em
bryo and endogenous wood in date of appearance on the
globe facts wholly opposed to the doctrine of progression,
and which can only be set aside on the supposition that they
are fragmentary evidence of a kind farther removed from the
origin of vegetation than from the present day.*
It would be an easy task to- multiply objections to the
theory now under consideration ; but from this I refrain, as I
regard it not only as a useful r but rather, in the present state
of science, as an indispensable hypothesis, and one which,
though destined hereafter to undergo many and great modifi
cations, will never be overthrown.
It may be thought almost paradoxical that writers who are
most in favour of transmutation (Mr. C. Darwin and Dr. J.
Hooker, for example) are nevertheless among those who are
most cautious, and one would say timid, in their mode of es
pousing the doctrine of progression ; while, on the other hand,
the most zealous advocates of progression are oftener than
not very vehement opponents of transmutation. We might
have anticipated a contrary leaning on the part of both, for
to what does the theory of progression point ? It supposes
a gradual elevation in grade of the vertebrate type, in the
course of ages, from the most simple ichthyic form to that
of the placental mammalia and the coming upon the stage
last in the order of time of the most anthropomorphous
mammalia, followed by the human race this last thus ap-
* Flora of Australia, Introductory Essay, p. xxi. London, 1859. Published
separately.
406 PROGRESSION AND TRANSMUTATION. CHAP. xx.
pearing as an integral part of the same continuous series of
acts of development, one link in the same chain, the crowning-
operation as it were of one and the same series of manifesta
tions of creative power. If the dangers apprehended from
transmutation arise from the too intimate connection which
it tends to establish between the human and merely animal
natures, it might have been expected that the progressive
development of organisation, instinct, and intelligence might
have been unpopular, as likely to pioneer the way for the re
ception of the less favoured doctrine. But the true explana
tion of the seeming anomaly is this, that no one can believe
in transmutation who is not profoundly convinced that all
we know in paleontology is as nothing compared to what we
have yet to learn, and they who regard the record as so
fragmentary, and our acquaintance with the fragments which
are extant as so rudimentary, are apt to be astounded at
the confidence placed by the progressionists in data which
must be defective in the extreme. But exactly in propor
tion as the completeness of the record and our knowledge of
it are overrated, in that same degree are many progressionists
unconscious of the goal towards which they are drifting.
Their faith in the fullness of the annals leads them to
regard all breaks in the series of organic existence, or in
the sequence of the fossiliferous rocks, as proofs of original
chasms and leaps in the course of nature, signs of the inter
mittent action of the creational force, or of catastrophes which
devastated the habitable surface ; and they are therefore fear
less of discovering any continuity of plan (except that which
must have existed in the Divine mind) which would imply a
material connection between the outgoing organisms and the
incoming ones.
CHAP. xxi. ORIGIN OF SPECIES, 407
CHAPTER XXL
ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY VARIATION AND NATURAL
SELECTION.
MR. DARWIN'S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY NATURAL
SELECTION MEMOIR BY MR. WALLACE MANNER IN WHICH FAVOURED
RACES PREVAIL IN THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE FORMATION OF
NEW RACES BY BREEDING HYPOTHESES OF DEFINITE AND INDEFINITE
MODIFIABILITY EQUALLY ARBITRARY COMPETITION AND EXTINCTION
OF RACES PROGRESSION NOT A NECESSARY ACCOMPANIMENT OF
VARIATION DISTINCT CLASSES OF PHENOMENA WHICH NATURAL
SELECTION EXPLAINS UNITY OF TYPE, RUDIMENTARY ORGANS, GEO
GRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, RELATION OF THE EXTINCT TO THE LIVING
FAUNA AND FLORA, AND MUTUAL RELATIONS OF SUCCESSIVE GROUPS
OF FOSSIL FORMS LIGHT THROWN ON EMBRYOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
BY NATURAL SELECTION WHY LARGE GENERA HAVE MORE VARIABLE
SPECIES THAN SMALL ONES DR. HOOKER ON THE EVIDENCE AFFORDED
BY THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM IN FAVOUR OF CREATION BY VARIATION
SEFSTROM ON ALTERNATE GENERATION HOW FAR THE DOCTRINE
OF INDEPENDENT CREATION IS OPPOSED TO THE LAWS NOW GOVERNING
THE MIGRATION OF SPECIES.
FOR many years after the promulgation of Lamarck's doc
trine of progressive development, geologists were much
occupied with the question whether the past changes in the
animate and inanimate world were brought about by sudden
and paroxysmal action, or gradually and continuously, by
causes differing neither in kind nor degree from those now in
operation.
The anonymous author of ( The Vestiges of Creation ' pub
lished in 1844 a treatise, written in a clear and attractive
style, which made the English public familiar with the lead
ing views of Lamarck on transmutation and progression, but
brought no new facts or original line of argument to sup-
408 ME. DARWIN'S THEORY OF THE ORIGIN OF CHAP. xxi.
port those views, or to combat the principal objections which
the scientific world entertained against them.
No decided step in this direction was made until the pub
lication in 1858 of two papers, one by Mr. Darwin and
another by Mr. Wallace, followed in 1859 by Mr. Darwin's
celebrated work on ' The Origin of Species by Means of
Natural Selection ; or, the Preservation of favoured Eaces in
the Struggle for Life.' The author of this treatise had for
twenty previous years strongly inclined to believe that varia
tion and the ordinary laws of reproduction were among the
secondary causes always employed by the Author of nature, in
the introduction from time to time of new species into the
world, and he had devoted himself patiently to the collecting
of facts, and making of experiments in zoology and botany,
with a view of testing the soundness of the theory of trans
mutation. Part of the MS. of his projected work was read
to Dr. Hooker as early as 1844, and some of the principal
results were communicated to me on several occasions.
Dr. Hooker and I had repeatedly urged him to publish
without delay, but in vain, as he was always unwilling to
interrupt the course of his investigations; until at length
Mr. Alfred E. Wallace, who had been engaged for years in
collecting and studying the animals of the East Indian
archipelago, thought out, independently for himself, one of
the most novel and important of Mr. Darwin's theories.
This he embodied in an essay f On the Tendency of Varieties
to depart indefinitely from the original Type.' It was written
at Ternate, in February 1858, and sent to Mr. Darwin/ with a
request that it might be shown to me if thought sufficiently
novel and interesting. Dr. Hooker and I were of opinion that
it should be immediately printed, and we succeeded in per
suading Mr. Darwin to allow one of the MS. chapters of his
' Origin of Species,' entitled ( On the Tendency of Species
to form Varieties, and on the Perpetuation of Species and
CHAP. xxi. SPECIES BY NATURAL SELECTION. 409
Varieties by natural Means of Selection,' to appear at the
same time.*
By reference to these memoirs it will be seen that both
writers begin by applying to the animal and vegetable worlds
the Malthusian doctrine of population, or its tendency to in
crease in a geometrical ratio, while food can only be made to
augment even locally in an arithmetical one. There being,
therefore, no room or means of subsistence for a large pro
portion of the plants and animals which are born into the
world, a great number must annually perish. Hence there
is a constant struggle for existence among the individuals
which represent each species, and the vast majority can
never reach the adult state, to say nothing of the multitudes
of ova and seeds, which are never hatched or allowed to
germinate. Of birds it is estimated that the number of
those which die every year equals the aggregate number by
which the species to which they respectively belong is on the
average permanently represented.
The trial of strength, which must decide what individuals
are to survive and what to succumb, occurs in the season
when the means of subsistence are fewest, or enemies most
numerous, or when the individuals are enfeebled by climate
or other causes; and it is then that those varieties which
have any, even the slightest, advantage over others come off
victorious. They may often owe their safety to what would
seem to a casual observer a trifling difference, such as a darker
or lighter shade of colour rendering them less visible to a
species which preys upon them, or sometimes to attributes
more obviously advantageous, such as greater cunning, or
superior powers of flight or swiftness of foot. These peculiar
qualities and faculties, bodily and instinctive, may enable them
to outlive their less favoured rivals, and being transmitted
* See Proceedings of Linnean Society, 1858.
410 FORMATION OF NEW RACES. CHAP. xxi.
by the force of inheritance to their offspring, will constitute
new races, or what Mr. Darwin calls ( incipient species.' If
one variety, being in other respects just equal to its com
petitors, happens to be more prolific, some of its offspring
will stand a greater chance of being among those which will
escape destruction, and their descendants, being in like
manner very fertile, will continue to multiply at the expense
of all less prolific varieties.
As breeders of domestic animals, when they choose certain
varieties in preference to others to breed from, speak techni
cally of their method as that of ' selecting,' Mr. Darwin calls
the combination of natural causes, which may enable certain
varieties of wild animals or plants to prevail over others of
the same species, e natural selection,'
A breeder finds that a new race of cattle with short horns
or without horns may be formed, in the course of several
generations, by choosing varieties having the most stunted
horns as his stock from which to breed ; so nature, by altering,
in. the course of ages, the conditions of life, the geographical
features of a country, its climate, the associated plants and
animals, and, consequently, the food and enemies of a species
and its mode of life, may be said, by this means, to select
certain varieties best adapted for the new state of things.
Such new races may often supplant the original type from
which they have diverged, although that type may have been
perpetuated without modification for countless anterior ages
in the same region, so long as it was in harmony with the
surrounding conditions then prevailing.
Lamarck, when speculating on the origin of the long neck
. of the giraffe, imagined that quadruped to have stretched
himself up in order to reach the boughs of lofty trees, until
,by continued efforts, and longing to reach higher, he obtained
an elongated neck. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace simply
suppose that, in a season of scarcity, a longer-necked variety,
CHAP. xxi. COMPETITION OF RACES. 411
having the advantage in this respect over most of the herd,
as being able to browse on foliage out of their reach, survived
them, and transmitted its peculiarity of cervical conformation
to its successors.
By the multiplying of slight modifications in the course
of thousands of generations, and by the handing down of
the newly-acquired peculiarities by inheritance, a greater and
greater divergence from the original standard is supposed to
be effected, until what may be called a new species, or, in a
greater lapse of time, a new genus, will be the result.
Every naturalist admits that there is a general tendency in '
animals and plants to vary ; but it is usually taken for granted,
though we have no means of proving the assumption to be
true, that there are certain limits beyond which each species
cannot pass under any circumstances, or in any number of
generations. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Wallace say that the
opposite hypothesis, which assumes that every species is
capable of varying indefinitely from its original type, is not
a whit more arbitrary, and has this manifest claim to be pre
ferred, that it will account for a multitude of phenomena
which the ordinary theory is incapable of explaining.
We have no right, they say, to assume, should we find that
a variable species can no longer be made to vary in a certain
direction, that it has reached the utmost limit to which it
might, under more favourable conditions, or if more time
were allowed, be made to diverge from the parent type.
Hybridisation is not considered by Mr. Darwin as a cause
of new species, but rather as tending to keep variation with
in bounds. Varieties which are nearly allied cross readily
with each other, and with the parent stock, and such cross
ing tends to keep the species true to its type, while forms
which are less nearly related, although they may intermarry,
produce no mule offspring capable of perpetuating their kind.
The competition of races and species, observes Mr. Darwin,
412 PROGRESSION AND VARIATION. CHAP. xxi.
is always most severe between those which, are most closely
allied and which fill nearly the same place in the economy of
'nature. Hence, when the conditions of existence are modi
fied, the original stock runs great risk of being superseded
by some one of its modified offshoots. The new race or
species may not be absolutely superior in the sum of its
powers and endowments to the parent stock, and may even be
more simple in structure and of a lower grade of intelligence,
as well as of organisation, provided, on the whole, it happens
to have some slight advantage over its rivals. Progression,
therefore, is not a necessary accompaniment of variation and
natural selection, though, when a higher organisation hap
pens to be coincident with superior fitness to new conditions,
the new species will have greater power and a greater chance
of permanently maintaining and extending its ground. One
of the principal claims of Mr. Darwin's theory to acceptance
is, that it enables us to dispense with a law of progression
as a necessary accompaniment of variation. It will account
equally well for what is called degradation, or a retrograde
movement towards a simpler structure, and does not require
Lamarck's continual creation of monads ; for this was a
necessary part of his system, in order to explain how, after
the progressive power had been at work for myriads of ages,
there were as many beings of the simplest structure in exist
ence as ever.
Mr. Darwin labours to show, and with no small success,
that all true classification in zoology and botany is, in fact,
genealogical, and that community of descent is the hidden
bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking,
while they often imagined that they were looking for some
unknown plan of creation.
As the < Origin of Species,'* is in itself a condensed
* Origin of Species, p. 121.
CHAP. xxi. * NATURAL SELECTION.' 413
abstract of a much larger work not yet published, I could
not easily give an analysis of its contents within narrower
limits than those of the original, but it may be useful to
enumerate briefly some of the principal classes of phenomena
on which the theory of e Natural Selection ' is believed by
its author to throw light.
In the first place, it would explain, says Mr. Darwin, the
unity of type which runs through the whole organic world,
and why there is sometimes a fundamental agreement in
structure in the same class of beings which is quite indepen
dent of their habits of life, for such structure, derived by
inheritance from a remote progenitor, has been modified, in
the course of ages, in different ways, according to the condi
tions of existence. It would also explain why all living and
extinct beings are united, by complex radiating and circuitous
lines of affinity with one another, into one grand system ; *
also, there having been a continued extinction of old races
and species in progress, and a formation of new ones by varia
tion, why in some genera which are largely represented, or to
which a great many species belong, many of these are closely
but unequally related; also, why there are distinct geographical
provinces of species of animals and plants, for, after long
isolation by physical barriers, each fauna and flora, by varying
continually, must become distinct from its ancestral type,
and from the new forms assumed by other descendants which
have diverged from the same stock.
The theory of indefinite modification would also explain why
rudimentary organs are so useful in classification, being the
remnants preserved by inheritance of organs which the present
species once used as in the case of the rudiments of eyes
in insects and reptiles inhabiting dark caverns, or of the
wings of birds and beetles which have lost all power of flight.
* Origin, p. 498.
414 NATURAL SELECTION. CHAP. XXT.
IQ such cases the affinities of species are often more readily
discerned by reference to these imperfect structures than by
others of much more physiological importance to the in
dividuals themselves.
The same hypothesis would explain why there are no mam
malia in islands far from continents, except bats, which can
reach them by flying ; and also why the birds, insects, plants,
and other inhabitants of islands, even when specifically
unlike, usually agree generically with those of the nearest
continent, it being assumed that the original stock of such
species came by migration from the nearest land.
Variation and natural selection would also afford a key to a
multitude of geological facts otherwise wholly unaccounted
for, as, for example, why there is generally an intimate con
nection between the living animals and plants of each great
division of the globe and the extinct fauna and flora of the
post- tertiary or tertiary formations of the same region ; as, for
example, in North America, where we not only find among the
living mollusca peculiar forms foreign to Europe, such as Grna-
thodon and Fulgur (a subgenus of Pyrula), but meet also with
extinct species of those same genera in the tertiary fauna of the
same part of the world. In like manner, among the mammalia
we find in Australia not only living kangaroos and wombats,
but fossil individuals of extinct species of the same genera.
So also there are recent and fossil sloths, armadilloes, and other
edentata in South America, and living and extinct species
of elephant, rhinoceros, tiger, and bear in the great Europeo-
Asiatic continent. The theory of the origin of new species
by variation will also explain why a species which has once
died out never reappears, and why the fossil fauna arid flora
recede farther and farther from the living type in propor
tion as we trace it back to remoter ages. It would also
account for the fact, that when we have to intercalate a new
get of fossiliferous strata between two groups previously
CHAP. xxi. EMBRYOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT. 415
known, the newly discovered fossils serve to fill up gaps
between specific or generic types previously familiar to us,
supplying often the missing links of the chain, which, if
transmutation is accepted, must once have been continuous.
One of the most original speculations in Mr. Darwin's
work is derived from the fact that, in the breeding of
animals, it is often observed that at whatever age any varia
tion first appears in the parent, it tends to reappear at a
corresponding age in the offspring. Hence the young in
dividuals of two races which have sprung from the same
parent stock are usually more like each other than the
adults. Thus the puppies of the greyhound and bull-dog
are much more nearly alike in their proportions than the
grown-up dogs, and in like manner the foals of the cart and
racehorse than the adult individuals. For the same reason
we may understand why the species of the same genus,
or genera of the same family, resemble each other more
nearly in their embryonic than in their more fully developed
state, or how it is that in the eyes of most naturalists the
structure of the embryo is even more important in classifica
tion than that of the adult, 6 for the embryo is the animal in
its less modified state, and in so far it reveals the structure
of its progenitor. In two groups of animals, however much
they may at present differ from each other in structure and
habits, if they pass through the same or similar embryonic
stages, we may feel assured that they have both descended
from the same or nearly similar parents, and are therefore in
that degree closely related. Thus community in embryonic
structure reveals community of descent, however much the
structure of the adult may have been modified.'*
If then there had been a system of progressive develop
ment, the successive changes through which the embryo of a
* Darwin, Origin, &c., p. 448.
416 VAKIETIES, INCIPIENT SPECIES. ' CHAP. xxi.
species of a high class, a mammifer, for example, now passes,
may be expected to present us with a picture of the stages
through which, in the course of ages, that class of animals
has successively passed in advancing from a lower to a
higher grade. Hence the embryonic states exhibited one
after the other by the human individual bear a certain amount
of resemblance to those of the fish, reptile, and bird before
assuming those of the highest division of the vertebrata.
Mr. Darwin, after making a laborious analysis of many
floras, found that those genera which are represented by a
large number of species contain a greater number of variable
species, relatively speaking, than the smaller genera, or those
less numerously represented. This fact he adduces in support
of his opinion that varieties are incipient species, for he ob
serves that the existence of the larger genera implies, in the
period immediately preceding our own, that the manufacturing
of species has been active, in which case we ought generally
to find the same forces still in full activity, more especially
as we have every reason to believe the process by which new
species are produced is a slow one.*
Dr. Hooker tells us that he was long disposed to doubt
this result, as he was acquainted with so many variable small
genera, but after examining Mr. Darwin's data, he was com
pelled to acquiesce in his generalisation.!
It is one of those conclusions, to verify which requires the
investigation of many thousands of species, and to which
exceptions may easily be adduced, both in the animal and
vegetable kingdoms, so that it will be long before we can
expect it to be thoroughly tested, and, if true, fairly appre
ciated. Among the most striking exceptions will be some
genera still large, but which are beginning to decrease, the
conditions which were favourable to their former predomi-
* Origin of Species, ch. ii. p. 56.
f Introductory Essay on Flora of Australia, p. vi.
CHAP. xxi. THEORY OF 6 CREATION BY VARIATION.' 417
nance having already begun to change. To many, this doc
trine of Natural Selection, or 'the preservation of favoured
races in the struggle for life,' seems so simple, when once
clearly stated, and so consonant with known facts and
received principles, that they have difficulty in conceiving
how it can constitute a great step in the progress of science.
Such is often the case with important discoveries, but in
order to assure ourselves that the doctrine was by no means
obvious, we have only to refer back to the writings of skilful
naturalists who attempted in the earlier part of the nine
teenth century, to theorise on this subject, before the inven
tion of this new method of explaining how certain forms
are supplanted by new ones, and in what manner these
last are selected out of innumerable varieties, and rendered
permanent.
Dr. Hooker, on the Theory of ' Creation by Variation ' as
applied to'the Vegetable Kingdom.
Of Dr. Hooker, whom I have often cited in this chapter,
Mr. Darwin has spoken in the Introduction to his ( Origin of
Species,' as one f who had, for fifteen years, aided him in every
possible way, by his large stores of knowledge, and his excel
lent judgement.' This distinguished botanist published his
' Introductory Essay to the Flora of Australia ' * in 1859, the
year after the memoir on ( Natural Selection 'was communi
cated to the Linnsean Society, and a few months before
the appearance of the f Origin of Species.'
Having, in the course of his extensive travels, studied the
botany of arctic, temperate, and tropical regions, and writ
ten on the flora of India, which he had examined at all
heights above the sea, from the plains of Bengal to the limits
* Introductory Essay, &c., sold separately. Loyell Eeeve, London, 1859.
E E
418 MUTABILITY IN THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM. CHAP. xxi.
of perpetual snow in the Himalaya, and having specially
devoted his attention to ( geographical varieties,' or those
changes of character which plants exhibit, when traced over
wide areas and seen under new conditions ; being also prac
tically versed in the description arid classification of new
plants, from various parts of the world, and having been
called upon carefully to consider the claims of thousands of
varieties to rank as species, no one was better qualified by
observation and reflection to give an authoritative opinion on
the question, whether the present vegetation of the globe is
or is not in accordance with the theory which Mr. Darwin
has proposed. We cannot but feel, therefore, deeply inte
rested when we find him making tbe following declaration :
( The mutual relations of the plants of each great botanical
province, and, in fact, of the world generally, is just such as
would have resulted if variation had gone on operating
throughout indefinite periods, in the same manner as we see
it act in a limited number of centuries, so as gradually to give
rise in the course of time, to the most widely divergent forms.'
In the same Essay, this author remarks, ' The element of
mutability pervades the whole Vegetable Kingdom ; no class,
nor order, nor genus of more than a few species claims abso
lute exemption from it, whilst the grand total of unstable
forms, generally assumed to be species, probably exceeds
that of the stable.' Yet he contends that species are neither
visionary, nor even arbitrary creations of the naturalist, but
realities, though they may not remain true for ever (p. 11).
The majority of them, he remarks, are so far constant,
4 within the range of our experience,' and their forms and
characters so faithfully handed down, through thousands of
generations, that they admit of being treated as if they were
permanent and immutable. But the range of ' our experi
ence ' is so limited, that it will not account for a single fact
in the present geographical distribution, or origin of any one
CHAP. XXI. LIMITATION OF SPECIES. 419
species of plant, nor for the amount of variation it has
undergone, nor will it indicate the time when it first appeared,
nor the form it had when created.'*
To what an extent the limits of species are indefinable, is
evinced, he says, by the singular fact that, among those
botanists who believe them to be immutable, the number of
flowering plants is by some assumed to be 80,000, and by
others over 150,000. The general limitation of species to
certain areas, suggests the idea that each of them, with all
their varieties, have sprung from a common parent, and have
spread in various directions from a common centre. The
frequency also of the grouping of genera within certain
geographical limits, is in favour of the same law, although
the migration of species may sometimes cause apparent
exceptions to the rule, and make the same types appear to
have originated independently at different spots.f
Certain genera of plants, which like the brambles, roses,
and willows in Europe, consist of a continuous series of
varieties, between the terms of which no intermediate forms
can be intercalated, may be supposed to be on the increase,
and therefore undergoing much variation ; whereas genera
which present no such perplexing gradations, may be those
which have been losing species and varieties by extinction.
The annihilation of the intermediate forms which once
existed, makes it an easy task to distinguish those which
remain.
It had usually been supposed by the advocates of the
immutability of species, that domesticated races, if allowed to
run wild, always revert to their parent type. Mr. Wallace
had said in reply, that a domesticated species, if it loses the
protection of man, can only stand its ground in a wild state
by resuming those habits, and recovering those attributes
* Hooker, Introductory Essay, Flora of Australia. f Ibid. p. 13.
K 2
420 REVERSION QUESTIONED. CHAP. xxi.
which it may have lost when under domestication. If these
faculties are so much enfeebled as to be irrecoverable, it will
perish ; if not, and if it can adapt itself to the surrounding con
ditions, it will revert to the state in which man first found it ;
for in one, two, or three thousand years, which may have
elapsed since it was originally tamed, there will not have
been time for such geographical, climatal, and organic changes,
as would only be suited to a new race, or a new and allied
species.
But in regard to plants, Dr. Hooker questions the fact of
reversion. According to him, species in general do not
readily vary, but when they once begin to do so, the new
varieties, as every horticulturist knows, show a great inclina
tion to go on departing more and more from the old stock.
As the best marked varieties of a wild species occur on the
confines of the area which it inhabits, so the best marked
varieties of a cultivated plant, are those last produced by the
gardener. Cabbages, for example, wall fruit, and cerealia,
show no disposition, when neglected, to assume the charac
ters of the wild states of these plants. Hence the difficulty of
determining what are the true parent species of most of our
cultivated plants. Thus the finer kinds of apples, if grown
from seed, degenerate and become crabs, but in so doing
they do not revert to the original wild crab-apple, but
become crab states of the varieties to which they belong.*
It would lead me into too long a digression, were I to
attempt to give a fuller analysis of this admirable essay ; but
I may add, that none of the observations are more in point,
as bearing on the doctrine of what Hooker terms ' creation
by variation,' than the great extent to which the internal
characters and properties of plants, or their physiological
constitution are capable of being modified, while they exhibit
* Introductory Essay, Flora of Australia, p. ix.
CHAP. xxi. ALTERNATE GENERATION. 421
externally, no visible departure from the normal form. Thus,
in one region a species may possess peculiar medicinal quali
ties which it wants in another, or it may be hardier and
better able to resist cold. The average range in altitude, says
Hooker, of each species of flowering plant in the Himalayan
Mountains, whether in the tropical, temperate, or Alpine
region, is 4,000 feet, which is equivalent to twelve degrees
of isothermals of latitude. If an individual of any of these
species be taken from the upper limits of its range and
carried to England, it is found to be better able to stand our
climate than those from the lower or warmer stations.
When several of these internal or physiological modifications
are accompanied by variation in size, habits of growth, colour
of the flowers, and other external characters, and these are
found to be constant in successive generations, botanists may
well begin to differ in opinion as to whether they ought to
regard them as distinct species or not.
Alternate Generation.
Hitherto, no rival hypothesis has been proposed as a sub
stitute for the doctrine of transmutation ; for ( independent
creation,' as it is often termed, or the direct intervention of the
Supreme Cause, must simply be considered as an avowal that
we deem the question to lie beyond the domain of science.
The discovery by Sefstrom of alternate generation enlarges
our views of the range of metamorphosis through which a
species may pass, so that some of its stages (as when a Sertu-
laria and a Medusa interchange) deviate so far from others as
to have been referred by able zoologists to distinct genera, or
even families. But in all these cases the organism, after
running through a certain cycle of change, returns to the
exact point from which it set out, and no new form or species
is thereby introduced into the world. The only secondary
4'22 INDEPENDENT CREATION. CHAP. xxr.
cause, therefore, which has, as yet, been even conjecturally
brought forward, to explain how, in the ordinary course of
nature, a new specific form may be generated is, as Lamarck
declared, ' variation,' and this has been rendered a far more
probable hypothesis by the way in which Natural Selection is
shown to give intensity and permanency to certain varieties.
Independent Creation.
When I formerly advocated the doctrine that species were
primordial creations, and not derivative, I endeavoured to
explain the manner of their geographical distribution, and
the affinity of living forms to the fossil types nearest akin
to them in the tertiary strata of the same part of the globe,
by supposing that the creative power, which originally adapts
certain types to aquatic and others to terrestrial conditions,
has, at successive geological epochs introduced new forms
best suited to each area and climate, so as to fill the places of
those which may have died out.
In that case, although the new species would differ from
the old (for these would not be revived, having been already
proved by the fact of their extinction, to be incapable of
holding their ground), still, they would resemble their pre
decessors generically. For, as Mr. Darwin states in regard
to new races, those of a dominant type inherit the advantages
which made their parent species flourish in the same country,
and they likewise partake in those general advantages which
made the genus to which the parent species belonged, a large
genus in its own country.
We might, therefore, by parity of reasoning, have antici
pated that the creative power, adapting the new types to the
new combination of organic and inorganic conditions of a
given region, such as its soil, climate, and inhabitants, would
introduce new modifications of the old types, marsupials,
CHAP. xxi. INDEPENDENT CREATION. 423
for example in Australia, new sloths and armadilloes in South
America, new heaths at the Cape, new roses in the northern,
and new camelias in the southern hemisphere. But to this
line of argument Mr. Darwin and Dr. Hooker reply, that
when animals or plants migrate into new countries, whether
assisted by man, or without his aid, the most successful
colonisers appertain by no means to those types which are
most allied to the old indigenous species. On the contrary,
it more frequently happens that members of genera, orders,
or even classes, distinct and foreign to the invaded country,
make their way most rapidly, and become dominant at the
expense of the endemic species. Such is the case with the
placental quadrupeds in Australia, and with horses and many
foreign plants in the pampas of South America, and number
less instances in the United States and elsewhere, which
might easily be enumerated. Hence, the transmutationists
infer that, the reason why these foreign types, so peculiarly
fitted for these regions have never before been developed
there, is simply that they were excluded by natural barriers.
But these barriers of sea, or desert, or mountain, could never
have been of the least avail, had the creative force acted
independently of material laws, or had it not pleased the
Author of Nature that the origin of new species should be
governed by some secondary causes analogous to those which
we see preside over the appearance of new varieties, which
never appear except as the offspring of a parent stock very
closely resembling them.
424 THEORY OF TRANSMUTATION. CHAP. XXIT.
CHAPTER XXII.
OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION CONSIDERED.
STATEMENT OF OBJECTIONS TO THE HYPOTHESIS OF TRANSMUTATION
FOUNDED ON THE ABSENCE OF INTERMEDIATE FORMS - GENERA OF
WHICH THE SPECIES ARE CLOSELY ALLIED OCCASIONAL DISCOVERY OF
THE MISSING LINKS IN A FOSSIL STATE - DAVIDSON'S MONOGRAPH ON
THE BRACHIOPODA - WHY THE GRADATION AL FORMS, WHEN FOUND,
ARE NOT ACCEPTED AS EVIDENCE OF TRANSMUTATION GAPS CAUSED
BY EXTINCTION OF RACES AND SPECIES - VAST TERTIARY PERIODS
DURING WHICH THIS EXTINCTION HAS BEEN GOING ON IN THE FAUNA
AND FLORA NOW EXISTING - GENEALOGICAL BOND BETWEEN MIOCENE
AND RECENT PLANTS AND INSECTS - FOSSILS OF OENINGHEN SPECIES
OF INSECTS IN BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA REPRESENTED BY
DISTINCT VARIETIES FALCONER'S MONOGRAPH ON LIVING AND FOSSIL
ELEPHANTS FOSSIL SPECIES AND GENERA OF THE HORSE TRIBE IK
NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA - RELATION OF THE PLIOCENE MAMMALIA.
OF NORTH AMERICA, ASIA, AND EUROPE SPECIES OF MAMMALIA,
THOUGH LESS PERSISTENT THAN THE MOLLUSCA, CHANGE SLOWLY
ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST TRANSMUTATION DERIVED FROM THE
ABSENCE OF MAMMALIA IN ISLANDS IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLO
GICAL RECORD INTERCALATION OF NEWLY DISCOVERED FORMATION
OF INTERMEDIATE AGE IN THE CHRONOLOGICAL SERIES REFERENCE
OF THE ST. CASSIAN BEDS TO THE TRIASSIC PERIODS - DISCOVERY OF
NEW ORGANIC TYPES FEATHERED ARCHEOPTERYX OF THE OOLITE.
Theory of Transmutation Absence of Intei^mediate Links.
most obvious and popular of the objections urged
-L against the theory of transmutation may be thus ex
pressed : If the extinct species of plants and animals of the
later geological periods were the progenitors of the living
species, and gave origin to them by variation and natural
selection, where are all the intermediate forms, fossil and
living, through which the lost types must have passed during
their conversion into the living ones ? And why do we not
find almost everywhere passages between the nearest allied
CHAP. xxn. OBJECTIONS TO TRANSMUTATION. 425
species and genera, instead of such strong lines of demarca
tion, and often wide intervening gaps ?
We may consider this objection under two heads:
First, To what extent are the gradational links really
wanting in the living creation or in the fossil world, and how
far may we expect to discover such as are missing by future
research ?
Secondly, Are the gaps more numerous than we ought
to anticipate, allowing for the original defective state of the
geological records, their subsequent dilapidation, and our
slight acquaintance with such parts of them as are extant,
and allowing also for the rate of extinction of races and
species now going on, and which has been going on since the
commencement of the tertiary period ?
First, As to the alleged absence of intermediate varieties
connecting one species with another, every zoologist and
botanist who has engaged in the task of classification has
been occasionally thrown into this dilemma, if I make
more than one species in this group, I must, to be consistent,
make a great many. Even in a limited region like the British
Isles, this embarrassment is continually felt.
Scarcely any two botanists, for example, can agree as to
the number of roses, still less as to how many species of
bramble we possess. Of the latter genus, Rubus, there is
one set of forms, respecting which it is still a question
whether it ought to be regarded as constituting three species
or thirty-seven. Mr. Bentham adopts the first alternative,
and Mr. Babington the second, in their well-known treatises
on British plants.
We learn from Dr. Hooker's Flora of Australia that this
same genus Rubus abounds likewise at the antipodes, and is
there also rich in variable species. When we consider how, as
we extend our knowledge of the same plant over a wider area,
new geographical varieties commonly present themselves, and
426 DAVIDSON ON FOSSIL BRACIIIOPODA. CHAP. xxn.
then endeavour to imagine the number of forms of the genus
Rubus which may now exist, or probably have existed in
Europe, and in regions intervening between Europe and
Australia, comprehending all which may have flourished in
tertiary and post-tertiary periods, we shall perceive how little
stress should be laid on arguments founded on the assumed
absence of missing links in the flora as it now exists.
If in the battle of life the competition is keenest between
closely allied varieties and species, as Mr. Darwin contends,
many forms can never be of long duration, nor have a wide
range, and these must often pass away without leaving behind
them any fossil memorials. In this manner we may account
for many breaks in the series which no future researches will
ever fill up.
Davidson on Fossil Brachiopoda.
It is from fossil conchology more than from any other
department of the organic world that we may hope to derive
traces of a transition from certain types to others, and fossil
memorials of all the intermediate shades of form. We may
especially hope to gain this information from the study of
some of the lower groups, such as the Brachiopoda, which are
persistent in type, so that the thread of our enquiry is less
likely to be interrupted by breaks in the sequence of the
fossiliferous rocks. The splendid monograph just concluded
by Mr. Davidson, on the British Brachiopoda, illustrates, in
the first place, the tendency of certain generic forms in this
division of the mollusca to be persistent throughout the
whole range of geological time yet known to us ; for the four
genera Rhynconella, Crania, Discina, and Lingula have
been traced through the Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous,
Permian, Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary, and Eecent periods,
and still retain in the existing seas the identical shape and
CHAP. xxii. DAVIDSON ON FOSSIL ERACHIOPODA. 427
character which they exhibited in the earliest formations.
On the other hand, other brachiopoda have gone through in
shorter periods a vast series of transformations, so that
distinct specific, and even generic names have been given to
, the same varying form, according to the different aspects
and characters it has put on in successive sets of strata.
In proportion as materials of comparison have accu
mulated, the necessity of uniting species, previously re
garded as distinct, under one denomination has become
more and more apparent. Mr. Davidson, accordingly, after
studying not less than 260 reputed species from the British
carboniferous rocks, has been obliged to reduce that num
ber to 100, to which he has added 20 species either entirely
new or new to the British strata; but he declares his con
viction that, when our knowledge of these 120 brachiopoda
is more complete, a further reduction of species will take
place.
Speaking of one of these forms, which he calls Spirifer
trigonalis, he says that it is so dissimilar to another extreme
of the series, 8. crassa, that in the first part of his memoir
(published some ten years ago) he described them as distinct,
and the idea of confounding them together must, he admits,
appear absurd to those who have never seen the intermediate
links, such as are presented by S. bisulcata, and at least four
others with their varieties, most of them shells formerly
recognised as distinct by the most eminent paleontologists,
but respecting which these same authorities now agree with
Mr. Davidson in uniting them into one species.*
The same species has sometimes continued to exist under
slightly modified forms throughout the whole of the Lower
and Upper Silurian as well as the entire Devonian and Car
boniferous periods, as in the case of the shell generally known
* Monograph on British Brachiopoda, Paleontological Society, p. 222.
428 DAVIDSON ON FOSSIL BRACHIOPODA. CHAP. xxn.
as Leptcena depressa, which we must now call, in obedience to
the law of priority of nomenclature, Anomites (or Stropho-
mena) rhomboidalis, Wahlenberg. No less than fifteen com
monly received species are demonstrated by Mr. Davidson, by
the aid of a long series of transitional forms, to appertain to
this one type, and it is acknowledged by some of the best
writers that they were induced to give distinct names to some
of the varieties now suppressed on purely theoretical grounds,
namely, because they found them in rocks so widely remote
in time, that they deemed it contrary to analogy to suppose
that the same species could have endured so long a mode of
reasoning analogous to that which leads some zoologists and
botanists to distinguish by specific names slight varieties of
living plants and animals met with in very remote countries,
as in Europe and Australia, for example, it being assumed
that each species has had a single birth-place or area of
creation, and that they could not by migration have gone
from the northern to the southern hemisphere across the
intervening tropics.
Examples are also given by Mr. Davidson of species which
pass from the Devonian into the Carboniferous, and from that
again into the Permian rocks. The vast longevity of such
specific forms has not been generally recognised in conse
quence of the change of names, which they have undergone
when derived from such distant formations, as when Atrypa
unguicularis assumes, when derived from a carboniferous
rock, the name of Spirifer Urii, besides several other syno
nyms, and then, when it reaches the Permian period, takes the
name of Spirifer Glannyana, (King) ; all of which forms the
author of the monograph, now under consideration, asserts to
be one and the same.
No geologist will deny that the distance of time which
separates some of the eras above alluded to, or the dates of
the earliest and latest appearances of some of the fossils
CHAP. xxn. WIDE RANGE OF VARIATION. 429
above mentioned, must be reckoned by millions of years.
According to Mr. Darwin's views, it is only by having at our
command the records of such enormous periods, that we can
expect to be able to point out the gradations which unite
very distinct specific forms. But the advocate of transmu
tation must not be disappointed if, when he has succeeded in
obtaining some of the proofs which he was, challenged to pro
duce, they make no impression on the mind of his opponent.
All that will be conceded is that specific variation in the
Brachiopoda, at least, has a wider range than was formerly
suspected. So long as several allied species were brought
nearer and nearer to each other, considerable uneasiness might
have been felt as to the reality of species in general, but when
fifteen or more are once fairly merged in one group, consti
tuting in the aggregate a single species, one, and indivisible,
and capable of being readily distinguished from every other
group at present kno^n, all misgivings are at an end. Implicit
trust in the immutability of species is then restored, and the
more insensible the shades from one extreme to the other, in
a word, the more complete the evidence of transition, the
more nugatory does the argument derived from it appear.
It then simply resolves itself into one of those exceptional
instances of what is called a protean form. 1
Thirty years ago a great London dealer in shells, himself an
able naturalist, told me that there was nothing he had so
much reason to dread, as tending to depreciate his stock in
trade, as the appearance of a good monograph on some large
genus of mollusca ; for, in proportion as the work was executed
in a philosophical spirit, it was sure to injure him, every
reputed species pronounced to be a mere variety becoming
from that time unsaleable. Fortunately, so much progress
has since been made in England in estimating the true ends
and aims of science, that specimens indicating a passage
between forms usually separated by wide gaps, whether in
430 IDENTITY OF FOSSIL WITH LIVING MOLLUSCA. CHAP. xxrr.
the recent or fossil fauna, are eagerly sought for, and often
more prized than the mere normal or typical forms.
It is clear, that the more ancient the existing mollusca, or
the farther back into the past we can trace the remains of
shells still living, the more easy it becomes to reconcile with
the doctrine of transmutation the distinctness in character of
the majority of living species. For, what we want is time,
first, for the gradual formation, and then for the extinction
of races and allied species, occasioning gaps between the
survivors.
In the year 1830, I announced, on the authority of
M. Deshayes, that about one-fifth of the mollusca of the
Falunian or Upper Miocene strata of Europe, belonged to
living species. Although the soundness of that conclusion
was afterwards called in question by two or three eminent
conchologists (and by the late M. Alcide d'Orbigny among
others), it has since been confirmed by the majority of living-
naturalists, and is well borne out by the copious evidence
on the subject laid before the public in the magnificent work
edited by M. Homes, and published under the auspices of
the Austrian Government, ' On the Fossil Shells of the
Vienna Basin.'
The collection of tertiary shells from which those descrip
tions and beautiful figures were taken is almost unexampled
for the fine state of preservation of the specimens, and the
care with which all the varieties have been compared. It is
now admitted that about one third of these Miocene forms,
univalves and bivalves included, agree specifically with living
mollusca, so that much more than the enormous interval
which divides the Miocene from the Eecent period must be
taken into our account when we speculate on the origin by
transmutation of the shells now living, and the disappear
ance by extinction of intermediate varieties and species.
CHAP. xxii. FOSSILS OF OENINGHEN. 431
Miocene Plants and Insects related to recent Species.
Geologists were acquainted with about three hundred
species of marine shells from the ( Falunian ' strata on the
banks of the Loire, before they knew anything of the contem
porary insects and ' plants. At length, as if to warn us
against inferring from negative evidence the poverty of
any ancient set of strata in organic remains proper to the
land, a rich flora and entomological fauna was suddenly
revealed to us characteristic of Central Europe during the
Upper Miocene period. This result followed the determina
tion of the true position of the Oeninghen beds in Switzerland,
and of certain formations of f Brown Coal ' in Germany.
Professor Heer, who has described nearly five hundred
species of fossil plants from Oeninghen, besides many more
from other Miocene localities in Switzerland,* estimates
the phenogamous species, which must have flourished in
Central Europe at that time, at 3,000, and the insects as
having been more numerous in the same proportion as they
now exceed the plants in all latitudes. This European
Miocene flora was remarkable for the preponderance of arbo
rescent and shrubby evergreens, and comprised many generic
types no longer associated together in any existing flora or
geographical province. Some genera, for example, which
are at present restricted to America, coexisted in Switzer
land with forms now peculiar to Asia, and with others at
present confined to Australia.
Professor Heer has not ventured to identify any of this
vast assemblage of Miocene plants and insects with living
species, so far at least as to assign to them the same specific
names, but he presents us with a list of what he terms
* Heer, Flora tertiana Helvetise, 1859 ; and Gaudin's French translation,
with additions, 1861.
432 MIOCENE PLANTS AND INSECTS CHAP. xxn.
homologous forms, which are so like the living ones, that he
supposes the one to have been derived genealogically from
the others. He hesitates indeed as to the ' manner of the
transformation, or the precise nature of the relationship,
" whether the changes were brought about by some influence
exerted continually for ages, or whether at some given
moment the old types were struck with a new image."
Among the homologous plants alluded to are forty species,
of which both the leaves and fruits are preserved, and thirty
others, known at present by their leaves only. In the first
list we find many American types, such as the tulip tree,
Liriodendron, the deciduous cypress, Taxodium, the red
maple, and others, together with Japanese forms, such as the
cinnamon, which is very abundant. And what is worthy of
notice, some of these fossils so closely allied to living plants
occur not only in the Upper, but even some few of them as
far back in time as the Lower Miocene formations of Switzer
land and Germany, which are probably as distant from the
Upper Miocene or Oeninghen beds as are the latter from our
own era.
Some of the fossil plants to which Professor Heer has
given new names have been regarded as recent species by
other eminent naturalists. Thus, Unger had called one of
the trees allied to the elm, Planera Richardi, a species
which now flourishes in the United States. Professor Heer
had attempted to distinguish it from the living tree by the
greater size of its fruit, but this character he confessed did
not hold good, when he had an opportunity (1861) of com
paring all the varieties of the living Planera Richardi
which Dr. Hooker laid before him in the rich herbarium
of Kew.
As to the ( homologous insects' of the Upper Miocene
period in Switzerland, we find among them, mingled with
genera and orders now wholly foreign to Europe, some very
CHAP. xxn. BELATED TO EECENT SPECIES. 433
familiar forms such as the common glowworm, Lampyris
noctiluca, Linn., the dung-beetle, Geotrupie stercorarius,
Linn., the ladybird, Coccinella septempunctata, Linn., the
earwig, Forficula auricularia, Linn., some of our common
dragon-flies, as Libellula depressa, Linn., the honey-bee,
Apis mellifera, Linn., the cuckoo spittle insect, Aphrophora,
spumaria, Linn., and a long catalogue of others, to all of
which Professor Heer has given new names, but which some
entomologists may regard as mere varieties until some
stronger reasons are adduced for coming to a contrary
opinion.
Several of the insects above enumerated, like the com
mon ladybird, are well known at present to have a very wide
range, over nearly the whole of the Old World, for example,
without varying, and might, therefore, be expected to have
been persistent throughout many successive changes of the
earth's surface and climate. Yet we may fairly anticipate
that even the most constant types will have undergone some
modifications in passing from the Miocene to the Recent
epoch, since in the former period the geography and climate
of Europe, the height of the Alps, and the general fauna and
flora were so different from what they now are. But the
deviation may not exceed that which would generally be
expressed by what is called, a well-marked variety.
Before I pass on to another topic, it may be well to answer
a question which may have occurred to the reader ; how it
happens that we remained so long igno'rant of the vegetation
and insects of the Upper Miocene period in Europe ? The
answer may be instructive to those who are in the habit of un
derrating the former richness of the organic world wherever
they happen to have no evidence of its condition. A large part
of the Upper Miocene insects and plants alluded to have been
met with at Oeninghen, near the Lake of Constance, in two or
three spots embedded in thinly laminated marls, the entire
F F
434 VARIETIES OF SPECIES OP INSECTS CHAP. xxn.
thickness of which scarcely exceeds three or four feet, and in
two quarries of very limited dimensions. The rare combination
of causes which seems to have led to the faithful preservation
of so many treasures of a perishable nature in so small an
area, appear to have been the following : first, a river flowing
into a lake ; secondly, storms of wind, by which leaves, and
sometimes the boughs of trees, were torn off, and floated by
the stream into the lake ; thirdly, mephitic gases rising from
the lake, by which insects flying over its surface were occasion
ally killed : and fourthly, a constant supply of carbonate of lime
in solution from mineral springs, the calcareous matter, when
precipitated to the bottom, mingling with fine mud, and thus
forming the fossiliferous marls.
Species of Insects in Britain and North America, repre
sented by distinct Varieties.
If we compare the living British insects with those of the
American continent, we frequently find that even those
species which are considered to be identical, are, neverthe
less, varieties of the European types. I have noticed this
fact when speaking of the common English butterfly, Vanessa
atalanta, or 6 red admirable,' which I saw flying about the
woods of Alabama in mid winter. I was unable to detect
any difference myself, but all the American specimens which
I took to the British Museum were observed by Mr. Double-
day to exhibit a slight peculiarity in the colouring of a
minute part of the anterior wing,* a character first detected
by Mr. T. F. Stephens, who has also discovered that similar
slight, but equally constant variations, distinguish other lepi-
doptera now inhabiting the opposite sides of the Atlantic,
insects which, nevertheless, he and Mr. Westwood and the
* LyelTs_Second Visit to the United States, vol. ii. p. 293.
CHAP. xxn. IN BRITAIN AND NORTH AMERICA. 435
late Mr. Kirby, have always agreed to regard as mere
varieties of tlie same species.
Mr. T. V. Wollaston, in treating of the variation of insects
in maritime situations and small islands, has shown how the
colour, growth of the wings, and many other characters,
undergo modification under the influence of local conditions,
continued for long periods of time ; * and Mr. Brown has lately
called our attention to the fact, that the insects of the Shet
land Isles present slight deviations from the corresponding
types occurring in Great Britain, but far less marked than
those which distinguish the American from the European
varieties.! In the case of Shetland, Mr. Brown remarks, a
land communication may well be supposed to have prevailed
with Scotland at a more modern era than that between
Europe and America. In fact, we have seen that Shetland
can hardly fail to have Been united with Scotland after the
commencement of the glacial period (see map, p. 279);
whereas a communication between the north of Europe by
Iceland and Greenland (which as before stated, once enjoyed
a genial climate), must have been anterior to the glacial
epoch. A much larger isolation, and the impossibility of
varieties formed in the two separated areas crossing with each
other, would account, according to Mr. Darwin's theory, for
the much wider divergence observed in the specific types of
the two regions.
The reader will remember that at the commencement of the
Glacial Period there was scarcely any appreciable difference
between the molluscous fauna and that now living. When
therefore the events of the Glacial Period, as described in the
earlier part of this volume are duly pondered on, and when we
reflect that in the Upper Miocene period the living species of
mollusca constitute only one third of the whole fauna, we see
* Wollaston, On the Variation of f Transactions of Northern Entomo-
Species,&c. London, Van Voorst, 1856. logical Society, 1862.
F F 2
436 RECENT AND FOSSIL MAMMALIA. CHAP. xxn.
clearly by how high a figure we must multiply the time in
order to express the distance between the Miocene Period
and our own days.
Species of Mammalia recent and fossil. Proboscidians.
But it may perhaps be said that the mammalia afford more
conspicuous examples than do the mollusca, insects, or plants
of the wide gaps which separate species and genera, and
that if in this higher class such a multitude of transitional
forms had ever existed as would be required to unite the ter
tiary and recent species into one series or net-work of allied
or transitional forms, they could not so entirely have es
caped observation, whether in the fossil or living fauna. A
zoologist who entertains such an opinion would do well to
devote himself to the study of some one genus of mammalia,
such as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, bear, horse,
ox, or deer ; and after collecting all the materials he can
get together respecting the extinct and recent species,
decide for himself whether the present state of science
justifies his assuming that the chain could never have
been continuous, the number of the missing links being so
great.
Among the extinct species formerly contemporary with
man, no fossil quadruped* has so often been alluded to in this
work as the mammoth, Elephas primigenius. From a mono
graph on the proboscidians by Dr. Falconer, it appears that this
species represents one extreme of a type of which the Pliocene
Mastodon Borsoni represents the other. Between these
extremes there are already enumerated by Dr. Falconer no
less than twenty-six species, some of them ranging as far
back in time as the Miocene period, others still living, like
the Indian and African forms. Two of these species, how
ever, he has always considered as doubtful, Stegodon Ganesa,
CHAP. xxn. PROBOSCIDIANS. 437
probably a mere variety of one of the others, and Elephas
priscus of Goldfuss, founded partly on specimens of the
African elephant, assumed by mistake to be fossil, and partly
on some aberrant forms of K antiquus.
The first effect of the intercalation of so many interme
diate forms between the two most divergent types, has been
to break down almost entirely the generic distinction between
Mastodon and Elephant. Dr. Falconer, indeed, observes that
Stegodon (one of several subgenera which he has founded)
constitutes an intermediate group, from which the other
species diverge through their dental characters, on the one
side into the Mastodons, and on the other into the
Elephants.* The next result is to dimmish the distance
between the several members of each of these groups.
Dr. Falconer has discovered that no less than four species
of elephant were formerly confounded together under the
title of Elephas primigenius, whence its supposed ubiquity
in post-pliocene times, or its wide range over half the
habitable globe. But even when this form has been thus
restricted in its specific characters, it has still its geographical
varieties ; for the mammoth's teeth brought from America
may in most instances, according to Dr. Falconer, be distin
guished from those proper to Europe. On this American
variety Dr. Leidy has conferred the name of E. Americanus.
Another race of the same mammoth (as determined by
Dr. Falconer) existed, as we have seen, before the glacial
period, or at the time when the buried forest of Cromer and
the Norfolk cliffs (see above, p. 216) was deposited ; and the
Swiss geologists have lately found remains of the mammoth
in their country, both in pre-glacial and post-glacial form
ations.
Since the publication of Dr. Falconer's monograph, two other
* Geological Quarterly Journal, vol. xiii. p. 314, 1857.
438 DIFFICULTY OF DISCRIMINATING SPECIES. CHAP. xxii.
species of elephant, E. mirificus, Leidy, and E. imperator,
have been obtained from the Pliocene formations of the
Niobrara Valley in Nebraska, t one of which, however, may
possibly be found hereafter to be the same as E. Columbi,
Falc. A remarkable dwarf species also (Eleplias Melitensis)
has been discovered, belonging, like the existing E. Afri-
canus, to the group Loxodon. This species has been esta
blished by Dr. Falconer on remains found by Captain
Spratt, E.K, in a cave in Malta.*
How much the difficulty of discriminating between the
fossil representatives of this genus may hereafter augment,
when all the species with their respective geographical
varieties are known, may be inferred from the following
fact : Professor H. Schlegel, in a recently published memoir,
endeavours to show that the living elephant of Sumatra
agrees with that of Geylon, but is a distinct species from that
of Continental India, being distinguishable by the number
of its dorsal vertebrae and ribs, the form of its teeth, and
other characteristics.! Dr. Falconer, on the other hand,
considers these two living species as mere geographical
varieties, the characters referred to not being constant, as
he has ascertained, on comparing different individuals of
E. Indicus in different parts of Bengal (in which the ribs
vary from nineteen to twenty), and different varieties of
E. Africanus,
An enquiry into the various species of the genus Rhino
ceros, recent and fossil, has led Dr. Falconer to analogous
results, as might be inferred from what was said in
Chapter X. (p. 173), and as a forthcoming memoir by
the same writer will soon more fully demonstrate.
Among the fossils brought in 1858 by Mr. Hayden from
* Proceedings of the Geological f Schlegel, Natural Historical Ee-
Society, London, 1862-, view, No. 5, p. 72, 1862.
CHAP. xxn. FOSSIL EQUINE SPECIES IN AMERICA. 439
the Niobrara Valley, Dr. Leidy describes a rhinoceros so like
the Asiatic species, R. Indicus, that he at first referred it to
the same, and, what is most singular, he remarks generally of
the Pliocene fauna of that part of North America, that it is
far more related in character to the post-pliocene and recent
fauna of Europe than to that now inhabiting the American
continent.
It seems indeed more and more evident that when we
speculate in future on the pedigree of any extinct quadruped
which abounds in the drift or caverns of Europe, we shall
have to look to North and South America as a principal
source of information. Thirty years ago, if we had been search
ing for fossil types which might fill up a gap between two
species or genera of the horse tribe (or great family of the
Solipedes), we might have thought it sufficient to have got
together as ample materials as we could obtain from the
continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia. We might have pre
sumed that as no living representative of the equine famity,
whether horse, ass, zebra, or quagga, had been furnished
by North or South America when those regions were first
explored by Europeans, a search in the transatlantic world for
fossil species might be dispensed with. But how different
is the prospect now opening before us ! Mr. Darwin first
detected the remains of a fossil horse during his visit to
South America, since which two other species have been met
with on the same continent, while in North America, in the
valley of the Nebraska alone, Mr. Hayden, besides a species
not distinguishable from the domestic horse, has obtained, ac
cording to Dr. Leidy, representatives of five other fossil genera
of Solipedes. These he names, Hipparion, Protohippus, Mery-
chippus, Hypohippus, and Parahippus. On the whole, no less
than twelve equine species, belonging to seven genera (includ
ing the Miocene Anchitherium of Nebraska), being already
440 SUPPOSED ATLANTIC CONTINENT. CHAP. xxn.
detected in the tertiary and post-tertiary formations of the
United States**
Professors linger f and Heer J have advocated, on botanical
grounds, the former existence of an Atlantic continent during
some part of the tertiary period, as affording the only plausible
explanation that can be imagined, of the analogy between
the Miocene flora of Central Europe and the existing flora of
Eastern America. Professor Oliver, on the other hand, after
showing how many of the American types found fossil in
Europe are common to Japan, inclines to the theory, first
advanced by Dr. Asa Gray, that the migration of species, to
which the community of types in the Eastern States of North
America and the Miocene flora of Europe is due, took place
when there was an overland communication from America to
Eastern Asia between the fiftieth and sixtieth parallels of
latitude, or south of Behring's Straits, following the direction
of the Aleutian islands. By this course they may have
made their way, at any epoch, Miocene, Pliocene, or Post-
pliocene, antecedently to the Grlacial epoch, to Amoorland, on
the east coast of Northern Asia.
We have already seen (p. 158) that the living quadrupeds
of Amoorland are now nearly all specifically identical with
those at present inhabiting the continent of Western Europe
and the British Isles.
A monograph on the hippopotamus, bear, ox, stag, or any
other genus of mammalia common in the European drift or
caverns, might equally well illustrate the defective state of
the materials at present at our command. We are rarely in
possession of one perfect skeleton of any extinct species,
still less of skeletons of both sexes, and of different ages.
* Proceedings of Academy of Natu- j Flora tertiaria Helvetiae/
ral Science, Philadelphia, for 1858, Oliver, Lecture at the Koyal In-
p. 89. % Btitution, March 7, 1862.
f Die versunkene Insel Atlantis.
CHAP. xxii. LONGEVITY OF SPECIES IN MAMMALIA. 441
We usually know nothing of the geographical varieties of the
post-pliocene and pliocene species, least of all, those successive
changes of form which they must have undergone in the pre-
glacial epoch between the upper miocene and post-pliocene
eras. Such being the poverty of our palseontological data,
we cannot wonder that osteologists are at variance as to
whether certain remains found in caverns are of the same
species as those now living ; whether, for example, the Talpa
fossilis is really the common mole, the Meles morreni the
common badger, Lutra antiqua the otter of Europe, Sciurus
priscus the squirrel, Arctomys primigenia the marmot,
Myoxus fossilis the dormouse, Schmerling's Felix Engihou-
lensis the European lynx, or whether Ursus spelceus and
Ursus priscus are not extinct races of the living brown bear
( Ursus arctos). t
If at some future period all the above-mentioned species
should be united with their allied congeners, it cannot fail to
enlarge our conception of the modifications which a species
is capable of undergoing in the course of time, although the
same form may appear absolutely immutable within the
narrow range of our experience.
Longevity of Species in the Mammalia.
In the < Principles of Geology,' in 1833,* I stated that the
longevity of species in the class mollusca exceeded that in
the mammalia. It has been since found that this generalisa
tion can be carried much farther, and that, in fact, the law
which governs the changes in organic beings is such, that the
lower their place in a graduated scale, or the simpler their
structure, the more persistent are they in form and organisa
tion. I soon became aware of the force of this rule in
the class mollusca, when I first attempted to calculate the
* 1st edit., vol. iii. pp. 48 and 140.
442 ' LONGEVITY OF SPECIES. CHAP. xxil.
numerical proportion of recent species in the newer pliocene
formations as compared to the older pliocene, and of them
again as contrasted with the miocene ; for it appeared invari
ably that a greater number of the acephala or lamelli-
branchiate bivalves could be identified with living species
than of the gasteropods, and of these last a greater number
in the lower division, that of entire-mouthed univalves, than
in that of the siphonated. In whatever manner the changes
have been brought about, whether by variation and natural
selection, or by any other causes, the rate of change has been
greater where the grade of organisation is higher.
It is only, therefore, where there is a full representation of
all the principal orders of mollusca, or when we compare
those of corresponding grade, that we can fully rely on the per
centage test, or on the proportion of recent to extinct species
as indicating the relation of two groups to the existing fauna.
The foraminifera which exemplify the lowest stage of
animal existence, being akin to the sponges, are extremely
persistent throughout vast periods of time in form and
structure, as the researches of Messrs, Jones and Parker have
lately shown. They exceed, in that respect, even the brachio-
podous mollusca before mentioned,
Dr. Hooker observes, in regard to plants of complex floral
structure, that they manifest their physical superiority in a
greater extent of variation, and in thus better securing a suc
cession of race, an attribute which in some senses he regards
as of a higher order than that indicated by mere complexity
or specialisation of organ.*
As one of the consequences of this law, he says that species,
genera, and orders are, on the whole, best limited in plants
of higher grade, the dicotyledons better than the monocoty
ledons, and the dichlamydese better than the achlamydese.
* Introductory Essay, &c., p. vii.
'CHAP. xxn. ABSENCE OF MAMMALIA IN ISLANDS. 443
Mr. Darwin remarks, 'We can, perhaps, understand the
apparently quicker rate of change in terrestrial, and in more
highly organised productions, compared with marine and
lower productions, by the more complex relations of the
higher beings to their organic and inorganic conditions of
life.*
If we suppose the mammalia to be more sensitive than are
the inferior classes of the vertebrata, to every fluctuation in
the surrounding conditions, whether of the animate or inani
mate world, it would follow that they would oftener be called
upon to adapt themselves, by variation, to new conditions, or
if unable to do so, to give place to other types, This would
give rise to more frequent extinction of varieties, species, and
genera, whereby the surviving types would be better limited,
and the average duration of the same unaltered specific types
would be lessened.
Absence of Mammalia in Islands considered in Reference
to Transmutation.
But if mammalia vary, upon the whole, at a more rapid
rate than animals lower in the scale of being, it must not be
supposed that they can alter their habits and structures
readily, or that they are convertible in short periods into new
species. The extreme slowness with which such changes of
habits and organisation take place, when new conditions
arise, appears to be well exemplified by the absence even of
small warm-blooded quadrupeds in islands far from continents,
however well such islands may be fitted by their dimensions
to support them.
Mr. Darwin has pointed to this absence of mammalia as
favouring his views, observing that bats, which are the only
* Origin of Species, 3rd ed. p. 340.
444 ABSENCE OF MAMMALIA IN ISLANDS. CHAP. xxn.
exceptions to the rule, might have made their way to distant
islands by flight, for they are often met with on the wing far
out at sea. Unquestionably, the total exclusion of quadru
peds in general, which could only reach such isolated habita
tions by swimming, seems to imply that nature does not
dispense with the ordinary laws of reproduction when she
peoples the earth with new forms ; for if causes purely imma
terial were alone at work, we might naturally look for squirrels,
rabbits, polecats, and other small vegetable feeders and
beasts of prey, as often as for bats, in the spots alluded to.
On the other hand, I have found it difficult to reconcile
the antiquity of certain islands, such as those of the Madeiran
Archipelago, and those of still larger size in the Canaries,
with the total absence of small indigenous quadrupeds, for,
judging by ancient deposits of littoral shells, now raised high
above the level of the sea, several of these volcanic islands
(Porto Santo and the Grand Canary among others), must
have existed ever since the Upper Mrocene period. But,
waiving all such claims to antiquity, it is at least certain
that since the close of the Newer Pliocene period, Madeira
and Porto Santo have constituted two separate islands, each
in sight of the other, and each inhabited by an assemblage of
land shells (helix, pupa, clausiliay &c.), for the most part
different or proper to each island. About thirty-two fossil
species have been obtained in Madeira, and forty-two in
Porto Santo, only five of the whole being common to both
islands. In each the living land-shells are equally distinct, and
correspond, for the most part, with the species found fossil in
each island respectively.
Among the seventy-two species, two or three appear to be
entirely extinct, and a larger number have disappeared from
the fauna of the Madeiran Archipelago, though still extant in
Africa and Europe. Many which were amongst the most
common in the Newer Pliocene period, have now become the
CHAP. xxil. CONSIDERED WITH REFERENCE TO TRANSMUTATION. 445
scarcest, and others formerly scarce, are now most numerously
represented. The variety-making force has been at work
with such energy, perhaps we ought to say, has had so much
time for its development, that almost every isolated rock
within gun-shot of the shores has its peculiar living forms, or
those very marked races to which Mr. Lowe, in his excellent
description of the fauna, has given the name of f sub-species.'
Since the fossil shells were embedded in sand near the
coast, these volcanic islands have undergone considerable
alterations in size and shape by the wasting action of the
waves of the Atlantic beating incessantly against the cliffs, so
that the evidence of a vast lapse oftime is derivable from
inorganic as well as from organic phenomena.
During this period no mammalia, not even of small species,
excepting bats, have made their appearance, whether in
Madeira and Porto-Santo or in the larger and more numerous
islands of the Canarian group. It might have been expected,
from some expressions met with here and there in the " Origin
of Species," though not perhaps from a fair interpretation of
tlie whole tenor of the author's reasoning, that this dearth of the
highest class of vertebrata is inconsistent with the powers of
mammalia to accommodate their habits and structures to new
conditions. Why did not some of the bats, for example, after
they had greatly multiplied, and were hard pressed by a
scarcity of insects on the wing, betake themselves to the
ground in search of prey, and, gradually losing their wings,
become transformed into non-volant insectivora ? Mr. Darwin
tells me that he has learnt that there is a bat in India which
has been known occasionally to devour frogs. One might also
be tempted to ask, how it has happened that the seals which
swarmed on the shores of Madeira and the Canaries, before the
European colonists arrived there, were never induced, when
food was scarce in the sea, to venture inland from the shores,
and begin in Teneriffe, and the Grand Canary especially, and
446 ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST CHAP. xxn.
other large islands, to acquire terrestrial habits, venturing first
a few yards inland, and then farther and farther until they
began to occupy some of those " places left vacant in the
economy of nature." During these excursions, we might
suppose some varieties, which had the skin of the webbed
intervals of their toes less developed, to succeed best in walk
ing on the land, and in the course of several generations they
might exchange their present gait or manner of shuffling
along and jumping by aid of the tail and their fin-like ex
tremities, for feet better adapted for running.
It is said that one of the bats in the island of Palma (one
of the Canaries) is of a peculiar species, and that some of the
Cheiroptera of the Pacific islands (or Oceanica) are even of
peculiar genera. If so, we seem, on organic as well as on
geological grounds, to be precluded from arguing that there
has not been time for great divergence of character. We
seem also entitled to ask why the bats and rodents of
Australia, which are spread so widely among the marsupials
over that continent, have never, under the influence of the
principle of progression, been developed into the higher or
placental type, since we have now ascertained that that
continent was by no means unfitted to sustain such mammalia,
for these, when once introduced by man, have run wild and
become naturalised in many parts. The following answers
may perhaps be offered to the above criticisms of some of
Mr. Darwin's theoretical views.
First, as to the bats and seals : they are what zoologists
call aberrant and highly specialised types, and therefore
precisely those which might be expected to display a fixity,
and want of pliancy in their organisation, or the smallest pos
sible aptitude for deviating in new directions towards new
structures, and the acquisition of such altered habits as a
change from aquatic to terrestrial or from volant to non-
volant modes of living would imply.
CHAP. xxii. TRANSMUTATION. 447
Secondly, the same powers of flight which enabled the first
bats to reach Madeira or the Canaries, would bring others
from time to time from the African continent, which, mixing
with the first emigrants and crossing with them, would check
the formation of new races, or keep them true to the old
types, as is found to be actually the case with the birds of
Madeira and the Bermudas.
This would happen the more surely, if, as Mr. Darwin has
endeavoured to prove, the offspring of races slightly varying
are usually more vigorous than the progeny of parents of
the same race, and would be more prolific, therefore, than the
insular stock which had been for a long time breeding in
and in.
The same cause would tend in a still more decided manner
to prevent the seals from diverging into new races or ( incipient
species,' because they range freely over the wide ocean, and,
may therefore have continual intercourse with all other indi
viduals of their species.
Thirdly, as to peculiar species, and even genera of bats
in islands, we are perhaps too little acquainted at present
with all the species and genera of the neighbouring continents
to be able to affirm, with any degree of confidence, that the
forms supposed to be peculiar do not exist elsewhere : those
of the Canaries in Africa, for example. But what is still
more important, we must bear in mind how many species
and genera of post-pliocene mammalia have ever}^ where
become extinct by causes independent of Man. It is always
possible, therefore, that some types of cheiroptera, originally
derived from the main land, have survived in islands, although
they have gradually died out on the continents from whence
they came ; so that it would be rash to infer that there has
been time for the creation, whether by variation or other
agency, of new species or genera in the islands in question.
As to the rodents and cheiroptera of Australia, we are as
448 IMPEKFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL RECORD. CHAP. xxn.
yet too ignorant of the post-pliocene and newer pliocene
fauna of that part of the world, to be able to decide whether
the introduction of such forms dates from a remote geological
time. We know, however, that, before the recent period, that
continent was peopled with large kangaroos, and other her
bivorous, and carnivorous marsupials, of species long since
extinct, their remains having been discovered in ossiferous
caverns. The preoccupaney of the country by such indigenous
tribes may have checked the development of the placental
rodents and cheiroptera, even were we to concede the pos
sibility of such forms being convertible by variation and
progressive development into higher grades of mammalia.
Imperfection of the geological record,
When treating in the 8th Chapter * of the dearth of human
bones in alluvium containing flint implements in abundance,
I pointed out that it is not part of the plan of Nature to write
everywhere, and at all times, her autobiographical memoirs.
On the contrary, her annals are local and exceptional from
the first, and portions of them are afterwards ground into
mud, sand, and pebbles, to furnish materials for new strata.
Even of those ancient monuments now forming the crust of
the earth, which have not been destroyed by rivers and the
waves of the sea, or which have escaped being melted by
volcanic heat, three-fourths lie submerged beneath the ocean,
and are inaccessible to man ; while of those which form the
dry land, a great part are hidden for ever from our observa
tion by mountain masses, thousands of feet thick, piled over
them.
Mr, Darwin has truly said that the fossiliferous rocks
known to geologists consist, for the most part, of such as
* Page 144 to 149.
CHAP. xxn. INTERCALATION OF NEWLY DISCOVERED FORMATION. 449
were formed when the bottom of the sea was subsiding.
This downward movement protects the new deposits from
denudation, and allows them to accumulate to a great thick
ness ; whereas sedimentary ma.tter, thrown down where the
sea-bottom is rising, must almost invariably be swept away
by the waves as fast as the land emerges.
When we reflect, therefore, on the fractional state of the
annals which are handed down to us, and how little even these
have as yet been studied, we may wonder that so many geo
logists should attribute every break in the series of strata,
and every gap in the past history of the organic world, to
catastrophes and convulsions of the earth's crust, or to leaps
made by the creational force from species to species, or from
class to class. For it is clear that, even had the series of
monuments been perfect and continuous at first (an hypo
thesis quite opposed to the analogy of the working of causes
now in action), it could not fail to present itself to our eyes
in a broken and disconnected state.
Those geologists who have watched the progress of dis
covery during the last half century, can best appreciate the
extent to which we may still hope by future exertion to fill
up some of the wider chasms which now interrupt the
regular sequence of fossiliferous rocks. The determination,
for example, of late years of the true place of the Hallstadt
and St. Cassian beds on the N. and S. flanks of the Austrian
Alps, has revealed to us, for the first time, the marine fauna
of a period (that of the Upper Trias) of which, until lately,
but little was known. In this case, the palaeontologist is called
upon suddenly to intercalate about 800 species of mollusca
and radiata, between the fauna of the Lower Lias and that of
the Middle Trias. The period in question was previously
believed, even by many a philosophical geologist, to have been
comparatively barren of organic types. In England, France,
and Northern Germany, the only known strata of Upper
G G
450 FEATHERED ARCH^OPTEEYX OF THE OOLITE. CHAP. xxir.
Triassic date had consisted almost entirely of fresh or
brackish-water beds, in which the bones of terrestrial and
amphibious reptiles were the most characteristic fossils.
The new fauna was, as might have been expected, in part
peculiar, not a few of the species of mollusca being referable
to new genera ; while some species were common to the
older, and some to the newer rocks. On the whole, the new
forms have helped greatly to lessen the discordance, not only
between the lias and trias, but also generally between paleo
zoic and neozoic formations. Thus the genus Orthoceras has
been for the first time recognised in a neozoic deposit, and
with it we find associated, for the first time, large ammonites
with foliated lobes, a form never seen before below the lias ;
also the Ceratite, a family of cephalopods never before met
with above the muschelkalk or middle trias, and never before
in the same stratum with such lobed ammonites.
We can now no longer doubt, that should we hereafter have
an opportunity of studying an equally rich marine fauna of
the age of the lower trias (or bunter sandstein), the marked
hiatus which still separates the Triassic and Permian eras
would almost disappear. , *
Archceopteryx macrurus, Owen. I could readily add a
copious list of minor deposits, belonging to the primary,
secondary, and tertiary series, which we have been called
upon in like manner to intercalate in the course of the
last quarter of a century into the chronological series pre
viously known ; but it would lead me into too long a digres
sion. I shall therefore content myself with pointing out
that it is not simply new formations which are brought
to light from year to year, reminding us of the elementary
state of our knowledge of paleontology, but new types also
of structure are discovered in rocks, the fossil contents of
which were supposed to be peculiarly well known.
CHAP. xxii. FEATHERED ARCILEOPTEIIYX OF THE OOLITE. 451
The last and most striking of these novelties is c the
feathered fossil' from the lithographic stone of Solon- -/ Ap* M J
hofen.
Until the year 1858, no well-determined skeleton of a bird
had been detected in any rocks older than the tertiary. In
that year, Mr. Lucas Barrett found in the upper greensand
of the cretaceous series, near Cambridge, the femur, tibia,
and some other bones of a swimming bird, supposed by him
to be of the gull tribe. His opinion as to the ornithic
character of the remains was afterwards confirmed by
Professor Owen.
The Archceopteryx macrurus, Owen, recently acquired by
the British Museum, affords a second example of the dis
covery of the osseous remains of a bird in strata older than
the Eocene. It was found in, the great quarries of litho
graphic limestone at Pappenheim, near Solenhofen in
Bavaria, the rock being a member of the Upper Oolite.
It was at first conjectured in Germany, before any ex
perienced osteologist had had an opportunity of inspecting
the original specimen, that this fossil might be a feathered
pterodactyl, (flying reptiles having been often met with in
the same stratum,) or that it might at least supply some
connecting links between a reptile and a bird. But Pro
fessor Owen, in a memoir lately read to the Eoyal Society,
(November 20, 1862,) has shown that it is unequivocally a
bird, and that such of its characters as are abnormal are by
no means strikingly reptilian. The skeleton was lying on
its back when embedded in calcareous sediment, so that the
ventral part is exposed to view. It is about one foot eight
inches long, and one foot four across, from the apex of the
right to that of the left wing. The furculum, or merry
thought, which is entire, marks the fore part of the trunk ;
the ischium, scapula, and most of the wing and leg bones
are preserved, and there are impressions of the quill feathers
G G 2
452 FEATHERED ARCILEOPTERYX OF THE OOLITE. CHAP. xxn.
and of down on the body. The veins and shafts of the fea
thers can be seen by the naked eye. Fourteen long quill
feathers diverge on each side of the metacarpal and phalangial
bones, and decrease in length from six inches to one inch.
The wings have a general resemblance to those of gallinaceous
birds. The tarso-metatarsal, or drumstick, exhibits at its
distal end a trifid articular surface supporting three .toes, as
in birds. The furculum, pelvis, and bones of the tail are in
their natural position. The tail consists of twenty vertebrae,
each of which supports a pair ,of plumes. The length of the
tail with its feathers is eleven and a half inches, and its
breadth three and a half. It is obtusely truncated at the
end. In all living birds the tail-feathers are arranged in
fan-shaped order and attached to a coccygean bone, consisting
of several vertebrae united together, whereas in the embryo
state these same vertebrae are distinct. The greatest number
is seen in the ostrich, which has eighteen caudal vertebrae in
the foetal state, which are reduced to nine in the adult
bird, many of them having been anchylosed together. Pro
fessor Owen therefore considers the tail of the Archasopteryx
as exemplifying the persistency of what is now an embryonic
character. The tail, he remarks, is essentially a variable
character. There are long-tailed bats and short-tailed bats,
long-tailed rodents and short-tailed rodents, long-tailed
pterodactyls and short-tailed pterodactyls.
The Archseopteryx differs from all known birds, not only in
the structure of its tail, but in having two, if not three digits
in the hand ; but there is no trace of the fifth digit of the
winged reptile.
The conditions under which the skeleton occurs are such,
says Professor Owen, as to remind us of the carcass of a gull
which had been a prey to some Carnivore, which had re
moved all the soft parts, and perhaps the head, nothing
being left but the bony legs and the indigestible quill-
CHAP. xxn. FEATHERED ARCH^EOPTERYX OF THE OOLITE. 453
feathers. But since Professor Owen's paper was read, Mr.
John Evans, whom I have often had occasion to mention in
the earlier chapters of this work, seems to have found what
may indicate a part of the missing cranium. He has called
our attention to a smooth protuberance on the otherwise even
surface of the slab of limestone which seems to be the cast of
the brain or interior of the skull. Some part even of the
cranial bone itself appears to be still buried in the matrix.
Mr. Evans has pointed out the resemblance of this cast to
one taken by himself from the cranium of a crow, and still
more to that of a jay, observing that in the fossil the median
line which separates the two hemispheres of the brain is
visible.
To conclude, we may learn from this valuable relic how
rashly the existence of Birds at the epoch of the Secondary
rocks has been questioned, simply on negative evidence, and
secondly, how many new forms may be expected to be brought
to light in strata with which we are already best acquainted,
to say nothing of the new formations which geologists are
continually discovering.
454 ARYAN HYPOTHESIS AND CONTROVERSY. CHAP. xxm.
CHAPTEE XXIII.
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGES AND SPECIES
COMPARED.
ARYAN HYPOTHESIS AND CONTROVERSY THE RACES OF MANKIND
CHANGE MORE SLOWLY THAN THEIR LANGUAGES THEORY OF THE
GRADUAL ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING WHAT IS
MEANT BY A LANGUAGE AS DISTINCT FROM A DIALECT GREAT
NUMBER OF EXTINCT AND LIVING TONGUES NO EUROPEAN LANGUAGE
A THOUSAND YEARS OLD GAPS BETWEEN LANGUAGES, HOW CAUSED
IMPERFECTION OF THE RECORD CHANGES ALWAYS IN PROGRESS
STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE BETWEEN RIVAL TERMS AND DIALECTS
CAUSES OF SELECTION EACH LANGUAGE FORMED SLOWLY IN A SINGLE
GEOGRAPHICAL AREA MAY DIE OUT GRADUALLY OR SUDDENLY
ONCE LOST CAN NEVER BE REVIVED MODE OF ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES
AND SPECIES A MYSTERY SPECULATIONS AS TO THE NUMBER OF
ORIGINAL LANGUAGES OR SPECIES UNPROFITABLE.
THE supposed existence, at a remote and unknown period,
of a language conventionally called the Aryan, has of
late years been a favourite subject of speculation among
German philologists, and Professor Max Miiller has given us
lately the most improved version of this theory, and has set
forth the various facts and arguments by which it may be
defended, with his usual perspicuity and eloquence. He
observes that if we knew nothing of the existence of Latin,
if all historical documents previous to the fifteenth
century had been lost, if tradition even was silent as to the
former existence of a Roman empire, a mere comparison of
the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Wallachian, and
RhaBtian dialects would enable us to say that at some time
there must have been a language, from which these six
modern dialects derive their origin in common. Without
CHAP, xxiii. ARYAN HYPOTHESIS AND CONTROVERSY. 455
this supposition it would be impossible to account for their
structure and composition, as, for example, for the forms of
the auxiliary verb ( to be,' all evidently varieties of one
common type, while it is equally clear that no one of the six
affords the original form from which the others could have
been borrowed. So also in none of the six languages do we
find the elements of which these verbal and other forms
could have been composed ; they must have been handed
down as relics from a former period, they must have existed
in some antecedent language, which we know to have been
the Latin.
But, in like manner, he goes on to show, that Latin itself,
as well as Greek, Sanscrit, Zend (or Bactrian), Lithuanian,
old Sclavonic, Gothic, and Armenian are also eight varieties
of one common and more ancient type, and no one of them
could have been the original from which the others were
borrowed. They have all such an amount of mutual resem
blance, as to point to a more ancient language, the Aryan,
which was to them what Latin was to the six Romance
languages. The people who spoke this unknown parent
speech, of which so many other ancient tongues were off
shoots, must have migrated at a remote era to widely sepa
rated regions of the old world, such as Northern Asia,
Europe., and India south of the Himalaya.*
The soundness of some parts of this Aryan hypothesis has
lately been called in question by Mr, Crawfurd, on the
ground that the Hindoos, Persians, Turks, Scandinavians,
and other people referred to as having derived not only
words but grammatical forms from an Aryan source, belong
each of them to a distinct race, and all these races have, it is
said, preserved their peculiar characters unaltered from the
earliest dawn of history and tradition. If, therefore, no
* Max Miiller, Comparative Mythology. Oxford Essays, 1856.
456 ARYAN HYPOTHESIS AND CONTROVERSY. CHAP. xxm.
appreciable change has occurred in three or four thousand
years, we should be obliged to assume a far more remote date
for the first branching off of such races from a common stock
than the supposed period of the Aryan migrations, and the
dispersion of that language over many and distant countries.
But Mr. Crawfurd haSj I think, himself helped us to
remove this stumbling-block, by admitting that a nation
speaking a language allied to the Sanscrit (the oldest of the
eight tongues alluded to), once probably inhabited that
region situated to the north-west of India, which within the
period of authentic history has poured out its conquering
hordes over a great extent of Western Asia and Eastern
Europe. The same people, he says, may have acted the
same part in the long, dark night which preceded the dawn
of tradition** These conquerors may have been few in
number when compared to the populations which they
subdued. In such cases the new settlers, although reckoned
by tens of thousands, might merge in a few centuries into the
millions of subjects which they ruled. It is an acknowledged
fact, that the colour and features of the Negro or European are
entirely lost in the fourth generation, provided that no fresh
infusion of one or other of the two races takes place. The
distinctive physical features, therefore, of the Aryan con
querors might soon wear out and be lost in those of the
nations they overran ; yet many of the words, and, what is
more in point, some of the grammatical forms of their lan
guage, might be retained by the masses which they had
governed for centuries, these masses continuing to preserve
the same features of race which had distinguished them long
before the Aryan invasions.
There can be no question that if we could trace back any
set of cognate languages now existing to some common point
* Crawfurd, Transactions of the Ethnological Society, vol. i. 1861.
CHAP. xxm. RACES CHANGE MORE SLOWLY THAN LANGUAGES. 457
of departure, they would converge and meet sooner in some
era of the past than would the existing races of mankind ;
in other words, races change much more slowly than lan
guages. But, according to the doctrine of transmutation, to
form a new species would take an incomparably longer
period than to form a new race. No language seems ever
to last for a thousand years, whereas many a species seems to
have endured for hundreds of thousands. A philologist, there
fore, who is contending that all living languages are derivative
and not primordial, has a great advantage over a naturalist
who is endeavouring to inculcate a similar theory in regard
to species.
It may not be uninstructive, in order fairly to appreciate
the vast difficulty of the task of those who advocate trans
mutation in natural history, to consider how hard it would
be even for a philologist to succeed, if he should try to
convince an assemblage of intelligent but illiterate persons
that the language spoken by them, and all those talked by
contemporary nations, were modern inventions, moreover
that these same forms of speech were still constantly under
going change, and none of them destined to last for ever.
We will suppose him to begin by stating his conviction,
that the living languages have been gradually derived from
others now extinct, and spoken by nations which had imme
diately preceded them in the order of time, and that those
again had used forms of speech derived from still older ones.
They might naturally exclaim, ( How strange it is that you
should find records of a multitude of dead languages, that a
part of the human economy which in our own time is so
remarkable for its stability, should have been so inconstant in
bygone ages ! We all speak as our parents and grandparents
spoke before us, and so, we are told, do the Grermans and
French. What evidence is there of such incessant variation
in remoter times ? and, if it be true, why not imagine that
458 DIFFICULTY OF DEFINING A LANGUAGE. CHAP. xxm.
when one form of speech was lost, another was suddenly and
supernaturally created by a gift of tongues or confusion of
languages, as at the building of the Tower of Babel ? Where
are the memorials of all the intermediate dialects which
must have existed, if this doctrine of perpetual fluctuation
be true ? And how comes it that the tongues now spoken
do not pass by insensible gradations the one into the other,
and into the dead languages of dates immediately antecedent ?
6 Lastly, if this theory of indefinite modifiability be sound,
what meaning can be attached to the term language, and
what definition can be given of it so as to distinguish a
language from a dialect ? '
In reply to this last question, the philologist might confess
that the learned are not agreed as to what constitutes a lan
guage as distinct from a dialect. Some believe that there
are 4,000 living languages, others that there are 6,000, so
that the mode of defining them is clearly a mere matter of
opinion. Some contend, for example, that the Danish,
Norwegian, and Swedish form one Scandinavian tongue,
others that they constitute three different languages, others
that the Danish and Norwegian are one, mere dialects of the
same language, but that Swedish is distinct.
The philologist, however, might fairly argue that this very
ambiguity was greatly in favour of his doctrine, since if lan
guages had all been constantly undergoing transmutation,
there ought often to be a want of real lines of demarcation
between them. He might, however, propose that he and his
pupils should come to an understanding that two languages
should be regarded as distinct whenever the speakers of them
are unable to converse together, or freely to exchange ideas,
whether by word or writing. Scientifically speaking, such a
test might be vague and unsatisfactory, like the test of species
by their capability of producing fertile hybrids ; but if the
pupil is persuaded that there are such things in nature as
CHAP. xxm. NO EUROPEAN LANGUAGE A THOUSAND TEAKS OLD. 459
distinct languages, whatever may have been their origin,
the definition above suggested might be of practical use, and
enable the teacher to proceed with his argument.
He might begin by undertaking to prove that none of the
languages of modern Europe were a thousand years old.
No English scholar, he might say, who has not specially
given himself up to the study of Anglo-Saxon, can interpret
the documents in which the chronicles and laws of England
were written in the days of King Alfred, so that we may be
sure that none of the English of the nineteenth century
could converse with the subjects of that monarch if these last
could now be restored to life. The difficulties encountered
would not arise merely from the intrusion of French terms,
in consequence of the Norman conquest, because that portion
of our language (nearly three-fourths of the whole) which is
Saxon has also undergone great transformations by abbrevia
tion, new modes of pronunciation, spelling, and various
corruptions, so as to be unlike both ancient and modern
German. They who now speak German, if brought into contact
with their Teutonic ancestors of the ninth century, would be
quite unable to converse with them, and, in like manner, the
subjects of Charlemagne could not have exchanged ideas with
the Goths of Alaric's army, or with the soldiers of Armimus
in the days of Augustus Csesar. So rapid indeed has been the
change in Germany, that the epic poem called the Nibelungen
Lied, once so popular, and only seven centuries .old, cannot
now be enjoyed, except by the erudite.
If we then turn to France, we meet again with similar
evidence of ceaseless change. Chevalier Pertz has printed a
treaty of peace a thousand years old, between Charles the'
Bald and King Louis of Germany (dated A.D. 841), in which
the German king takes an oath in what was the French
tongue of that day, while the French king swears in the
German of the same era, and neither of these oaths would now
460 NUMBER OF EXTINCT AND LIVING LANGUAGES. CHAP. xxm.
convey a distinct meaning to any but the learned in these
two countries. So also in Italy, the modern Italian cannot
be traced back much beyond the time of Dante, or some six
centuries before our time. Even in Kome, where there had
been no permanent intrusion of foreigners, such as the
Lombard settlers of German origin in the plains of the Po,
the common people of the year 1000 spoke quite a distinct
language from that of their JRoman ancestors or their Italian
descendants, as- is shown by the celebrated chronicle of the
monk Benedict, of the convent of St. Andrea on Mount
Soracte, written in such barbarous Latin, and with such
strange grammatical forms, that it requires a profoundly
skilled linguist to decipher it-*
Having thus established the preliminary fact^ that none of
the tongues now spoken were in existence ten centuries ago,
and that the ancient languages have passed through many a
transitional dialect before they settled into the forms now in
use, the philologist might bring forward proofs of the great
numbers both of lost and living forms of speech.
Strabo informs us that in his time, in the Caucasus alone
(a chain of mountains not longer than the Alps, and much
narrower), there were spoken at least seventy languages.
At the present period the number, it is said, would be still
greater, if all the distinct dialects of those mountains were
reckoned. Several of these Caucasian tongues admit of no
comparison with any known living or lost Asiatic or European
language. Others which are not peculiar are obsolete forms
of known languages, such as the Georgian, Mongolian, Per
sian, Arabic, and Tartarian. It seems that as often as con
quering hordes swept over that part of Asia, always coming
from the north and east, they drove before them the inha
bitants of the plains,' who took refuge in some of the retired
* See G-. Pertz, Monumenta Germanica, vol. iii.
CHAP. xxin. GAPS BETWEEN LANGUAGES, HOW CAUSED. 461
valleys and high mountain fastnesses, where they maintained
their independence, as do the Circassians in our time, in
spite of the power of Kussia,
In the Himalayan Mountains, from Assam to its extreme
north-rwestern limit, and generally in the more hilly parts of
British India, the diversity of languages is surprisingly great,
impeding the advance of civilisation and the labours of the
missionary. In South America and Mexico, Alexander Hum-
boldt reckoned the distinct tongues by hundreds, and those
of Africa are said to be equally numerous. Even in China,
some eighteen provincial dialects prevail, almost all deviat
ing so much from others that the speakers are not mutually
intelligible, and besides these there are other distinct forms
of speech in the mountains of the same empire.
The philologist might next proceed to point out that the
geographical relations of living and dead languages favour
the hypothesis of the living ones having been derived from
the extinct, in spite of our inability, in most instances, to
adduce documentary evidence of the fact or to discover
monuments of all the intermediate and transitional dialects
which must have existed. Thus he would observe that the
modern Romance languages are spoken exactly where the
ancient Romans once lived or ruled, and the Greek of our
days where the older classical Greek was formerly spoken.
Exceptions to this rule might be detected, but they would be
explicable by reference to colonisation and conquest.
As to the many and wide gaps sometimes encountered
between the dead and living languages, we must remember
that it is not part of the plan of any people to preserve
memorials of their forms of speech expressly for the edifica
tion of posterity. Their MSS. and inscriptions serve some
present purpose, are occasional and imperfect from the first,
and are rendered more fragmentary in the course of time,
some being intentionally destroyed, others lost by the decay
462 CHANGES ALWAYS IN PROGRESS. CHAP. xxm.
of the perishable materials on which they are written; so
that to question the theory of all known languages being
derivative on the ground that we can rarely trace a passage
from the ancient to the modern through all the dialects
which must have flourished one after the other in the inter
mediate ages, implies a want of reflection on the laws which
govern the recording as well as the obliterating processes.
But another important question still remains to be con
sidered, namely, whether the trifling changes which can alone
be witnessed by a single generation, can possibly represent
the working of that machinery which, in the. course of many
centuries, has given rise to such mighty revolutions in the
forms of speech throughout the world. Every one may have
noticed in his own lifetime the stealing in of some slight
alterations of accent, pronunciation or spelling, or the intro
duction of some words borrowed from a foreign language to
express ideas of which no native term precisely conveyed the
import. He may also remember hearing for the first time
some cant terms or slang phrases, which have since forced
their way into common use, in spite of the efforts of the purist.
But he may still contend that, ' within the range of his
experience,' his language has continued unchanged, and he
may believe in its immutability in spite of minor variations.
The real question, however, at issue is, whether there are any
limits to this variability. He will find on further investi
gation, that new technical terms are coined almost daily in
various arts, sciences, professions, and trades, that new names
must be found for new inventions, that many of these acquire
a metaphorical sense, and then make their way into general
circulation, as f stereotyped,' for instance, which would have
been as meaningless to the men of the seventeenth century
as would the new terms and images derived from steamboat
and railway travelling to the men of the eighteenth.
If the numerous words, idioms, and phrases, many of them
CHAP. xxm. NEW RIVAL TERMS AND DIALECTS. 463
of ephemeral duration, which are thus invented by the young
and old in various classes of society, in the nursery, the
school, the camp, the fleet, the courts of law and the school,
and the study of the man of science or literature, could all be
collected together and put on record, their number in one or
two centuries might compare with the entire permanent
vocabulary of the language. It becomes, therefore, a curious
subject of enquiry, what are the laws which govern not only
the invention, but also the ( selection ' of some of these words
or idioms, giving them currency in preference to others ? for
as the powers of the human memory are limited, a check must
be found to the endless increase and multiplication of terms,
and old words must be dropped nearly as fast as new ones
are put into circulation. Sometimes the new word or phrase,
or a modification of the old ones, will entirely supplant the
more ancient expressions, or, instead of the latter being
discarded, both may flourish together, the older one having
a more restricted use.
Although the speakers may be unconscious that any great
fluctuation is going on in their language, although when we
observe the manner in which new words and phrases are
thrown out, as if at random or in sport, while others get into
vogue, we may think the process of change to be the result
of mere chance, there are nevertheless fixed laws in action,
by which, in the general struggle for existence, some terms
and dialects gain the victory over others. The slightest
advantage attached to some new mode of pronouncing or
spelling, from considerations of brevity or euphony, may turn
the scale, or more powerful causes of selection may decide
which of two or more rivals shall triumph and which suc
cumb. Among these are fashion, or the influence of an aris
tocracy, whether of birth or education, popular writers,
orators, preachers, a centralised government organising its
schools expressly to promote uniformity of diction, and to
464 STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE, CAUSES OF SELECTION. CHAP. xxm.
get the better of provincialisms and local dialects. Between
these dialects, which may be regarded as so many ' incipient
languages,' the competition is always keenest when they are
most nearly allied, and the extinction of any one of them
destroys some of the links by which a dominant tongue may
have been previously connected with some other widely distinct
one. It is by the perpetual loss of such intermediate forms
of speech that the great dissimilarity of the languages which
survive is brought about. Thus, if Dutch should become a
dead language, English and German would be separated by
a wider gap.
Some languages which are spoken by millions, and spread
over a wide area, will endure much longer than others which
have never had a wide range, especially if the tendency to
incessant change in one of these dominant tongues is arrested
for a time by a standard literature. But even this source of
stability is insecure, for popular writers themselves are great
innovators, sometimes coining new words, and still oftener
new expressions and idioms, to embody their own original
conceptions and sentiments, or some peculiar modes of
thought and feeling characteristic of their age. Even when
a language is regarded with superstitious veneration as the
vehicle of divine truths and religious precepts, and which has
prevailed for many generations, it will be incapable of per
manently maintaining its ground. Hebrew had ceased to be
a living language before the Christian era. Sanscrit, the
sacred language of the Hindoos, shared the same fate, in
spite of the veneration in which the Vedas are still held, and
in spite of many a Sanscrit poem once popular and national.
The Christians of Constantinople and the Morea still hear
the New Testament and their liturgy read in ancient Greek,
while they speak a dialect in which Paul might have preached
in vain at Athens. So in the Eoman Catholic Church, the
Italians pray in one tongue and talk another. Luther's trans-
CHAP. xxin. EACH LANGUAGE FORMED SLOWLY. 465
lation of the Bible acted as a powerful cause of ' selection/
giving at once to one of many competing dialects (that of
Saxony) a prominent and dominant position in Germany;
but the style of Luther has, like that of our English Bible,
already become somewhat antiquated.
If the doctrine of gradual transmutation be applicable to
languages, all those spoken in historical times must each of
them have had a closely allied prototype ; and accordingly,
whenever we can thoroughly investigate their history, we
find in them some internal evidence of successive additions
by the invention of new words or the modification of old
ones. Proofs also of borrowing are discernible, letters being
retained in the spelling of some words which have no longer
any meaning as they are now pronounced, no connection
with any corresponding sounds. Such redundant or silent
letters, once useful in the parent speech, have been aptly
compared by Mr. Darwin to rudimentary organs in living
beings, which, as he interprets them, have at some former
period been more fully developed, having had their proper
functions to perform in the organisation of a remote pro
genitor.
If all known languages are derivative and not primordial
creations, they must each of them have been slowly elaborated
in a single geographical area. No one of them can have had
two birthplaces. If one were carried by a colony to a distant
region, it would immediately begin to vary unless frequent
intercourse was kept up with the mother country. The
descendants of the same stock, if perfectly isolated, would in
five or six centuries, perhaps sooner, be quite unable to
converse with those who remained at home, or with those
who may have migrated to some distant region, where they
were shut out from all communication with others speaking
the same tongue.
A Norwegian colony which settled in Iceland in the ninth
century, maintained its independence for about 400 years.
H H
466 MAY DIE OUT SUDDENLY OR GRADUALLY. CHAP. xxiu.
during which time the old Grothic which they at first spoke
became corrupted and considerably modified. In the mean
time the natives of Norway, who had enjoyed much com
mercial intercourse with the rest of Europe, acquired quite a
new speech, and looked on the Icelandic as having been
stationary, and as representing, the pure Grothic original of
which their own was an off-shoot.
A Grerman colony in Pennsylvania was cut off from
frequent communication with Europe for about a quarter of
a century, during the wars of the French Kevolution between
1792 and 1815. So marked had been the effect even of this
brief and imperfect isolation, that when Prince Bernhard of
Saxe Weimar travelled among them a few years after the
peace, he found the peasants speaking as they had done in
Grermany in the preceding century,* and retaining a dialect
which at home had already become obsolete.
Even after the renewal of the Grerman emigration from
Europe, when I travelled in 1841 among the same people in
the retired valleys of the Alleghanies, I found the newspapers
full of terms half English and half Grerman, and many an
Anglo-Saxon word which had assumed a Teutonic dress, as
6 fencen,' to fence, instead of umzaunen, ' flauer ' for flour,
instead of mehl, and so on. What with the retention of
terms no longer in use in the mother country, and the
borrowing of new ones from neighbouring states, there might
have arisen in Pennsylvania in five or six generations, but
for the influx of new comers from Grermany, a mongrel
speech equally unintelligible to the Anglo-Saxon and to the
inhabitants of the European fatherland.
If languages resemble species in having had each their
6 specific centre ' or single area of creation, in which they have
been slowly formed, so each of them is alike liable to slow or
* Travels of Prince Bernhard of Saxe Weimar, in North America, in 1825
and 1826, p. 123.
CHAP. XXITT. ONCE LOST, CAN NEVER BE REVIVED. 467
to sudden extinction. They may die out very gradually in
consequence of transmutation, or abruptly by the extermi
nation of the last surviving representatives of the unaltered
type. We know in what century the last Dodo perished,
and we know that in the seventeenth century the language
of the Red Indians of Massachusetts, into which Father
Eliot had translated the Bible, and in which Christianity
was preached for several generations, ceased to exist, the last
individuals by whom it was spoken having at that period
died without issue.* But if just before that event the white
man had retreated from the continent, or had been swept off
by an epidemic, those Indians might soon have repeopled
the wilderness, and their copious vocabulary and peculiar
forms of expression might have lasted without important
modification to this day. The extinction, however, of lan
guages in general is not abrupt, any more than that of
species. It will also be evident from what has been said,
that a language which has once died out can never be
revived, since the same assemblage of conditions can never
be restored even among the descendants of the same stock,
much less simultaneously among all the surrounding nations
with whom they may be in contact.
We may compare the persistency of languages, or the
tendency of each generation to adopt without change the
vocabulary of its predecessor, to the force of inheritance in
the organic world, which causes the offspring to resemble its
parents. The inventive power which coins new words or
modifies old ones, and adapts them to new wants and con
ditions as often as these arise, answers to the variety-making
power in the animate creation.
Progressive improvement in language is a necessary con
sequence of the progress of the human mind from one gene
ration to another. As civilisation advances, a greater number
* Lyell, Travels in North America, vol. i, p. 260. 1845.
H H 2
468 THOUGH LANGUAGES AND SPECIES DERIVATIVE, CHAP. xxm.
of terms are required to express abstract ideas, and words
previously used in a vague sense, so long as the state of
society was rude and barbarous, gradually acquire more
precise and definite meanings, in consequence of which
several terms must be employed to express ideas and things,
which a single word had before signified, though somewhat
loosely and imperfectly.
The farther this subdivision of function is carried, the
more complete and perfect the language becomes, just as
species of higher grade have special organs, such as eyes,
lungs, and stomach, for seeing, breathing, and digesting, which
in simpler organisms are all performed by one and the same
part of the body.*
When we have satisfied ourselves that all the existing lan
guages, instead of being primordial creations, or the direct
gifts of a supernatural Power, have been slowly elaborated,
partly by the modification of pre-existing dialects, partly by
borrowing terms at successive periods from numerous foreign
sources, and partly by new inventions made some of them
deliberately, and some casually and as it were fortuitously,
when we have discovered the principal causes of selection,
which have guided the adoption or rejection of rival names
for the same things and ideas, rival modes of pronouncing
the same words and provincial dialects competing one with
another, we are still very far from comprehending all the
laws which have governed the formation of each language.
It was a profound saying of William Humboldt, that
4 Man is man only by means of speech, but in order to invent
speech he must be already man.' Other animals may be
able to utter sounds more articulate and as varied as the
click of the Bushman , but voice alone can never enable
brute intelligence to acquire language.
' When we consider the complexity of every form of speech
* See Herbert Spencer's Psychology and Scientific Essays.
CHAP. XXTII. THEIR ORIGIN A MYSTERY. 469
spoken by a highly civilised nation, and discover that the gram*-
matical rules and the inflections which denote number, time,
and quality are usually the product of a rude state of society
that the savage and the sage, the peasant and man of letters,
the child and the philosopher, have worked together, in the
course of many generations, to build up a fabric which has
been truly described as a wonderful instrument of thought, a
machine, the several parts of which are so well adjusted to
each other as to resemble the product of one period and of
a single mind, we cannot but look upon the result as a
profound mystery, and one of which the separate builders
have been almost as unconscious as are the bees in a hive of
the architectural skill and mathematical knowledge which is
displayed in the construction of the honeycomb.
In our attempts to account for the origin of species, we
find ourselves still sooner brought face to face with the
working of a law of developement of so high an order as to
stand nearly in the same relation as the Deity himself to
man's finite understanding, a law capable of adding new and
powerful causes, such as the moral and intellectual faculties
of the human race, to a system of nature which had gone on
for millions of years without the intervention of any analogous
cause. If we confound ( Variation ' or ' Natural Selection '
with such creation al laws, we deify secondary causes or
immeasurably exaggerate their influence.
Yet we ought by no means to undervalue the importance
of the step which will have been made, should it ever become
highly probable that the past changes of the organic world
have been brought about by the subordinate agency of such
causes as ' Variation' and ' Natural Selection.' All our
advances in the knowledge of Nature have consisted of such
steps as these, and we must not be discouraged because
greater mysteries remain behind wholly inscrutable to us.
If the philologist is asked whether in the beginning of things
470 SPECULATIONS ON PRIMORDIAL TYPES. CHAP. xxm.
there was one or five, or a greater number of languages, he
may answer that, before he can reply to such a question, it
must be decided whether the origin of man was single, or
whether there were many primordial races. But he may
also observe, that if mankind began their career in a rude
state of society, their whole vocabulary would be limited to
a few words, and that if they then separated into several
isolated communities, each of these would soon acquire an
entirely distinct language, some roots being lost and others
corrupted and transformed beyond the possibility of subse
quent identification, so that it might be hopeless to expect to
trace back the living and dead languages to one starting
point, even if that point were of much more modern date
than we have now good reason to suppose. In like manner
it may be said of species, that if those first formed were of
very simple structure, and they began to vary and to lose
some organs by disuse and acquire new ones by develope-
ment, they might soon differ as much as so many distinctly
created primordial types. It would therefore be a waste of
time to speculate on the number of original monads or germs
from which all plants and animals were subsequently evolved,
more especially as the oldest fossiliferous strata known to us
may be the last of a long series of antecedent formations, which
once contained organic remains. It was not till geologists
ceased to discuss the condition of the original nucleus of the
planet, whether it was solid or fluid, and whether it owed its
fluidity to aqueous or igneous causes, that they began to
achieve their great triumphs ; and the question now at issue,
whether the living species are connected with the extinct by a
common bond of descent, will best be cleared up by devoting
ourselves to the study of the actual state of the living world,
and to those monuments of the past in which the relics of
the animate creation of former ages are best preserved and
least mutilated by the hand of time.
CHAP. xxiv. f TRANSMUTATION AS AN HYPOTHESIS. 471
CHAPTER XXIV.
BEARING OF THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMUTATION ON THE ORIGIN
OF MAN, AND HIS PLACE IN THE CREATION.
WHETHER MAN CAN BE REGARDED AS AN EXCEPTION TO THE RULE
IF THE DOCTRINE OF TRANSMUTATION BE EMBRACED FOR THE REST
OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM ZOOLOGICAL RELATIONS OF MAN TO OTHER
MAMMALIA SYSTEMS OF CLASSIFICATION TERM QUADRUMANOUS,
WHY DECEPTIVE WHETHER THE STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BRAIN
ENTITLES MAN TO FORM A DISTINCT SUB-CLASS OF THE MAMMALIA
INTELLIGENCE OF THE LOWER ANIMALS COMPARED TO THE IN
TELLECT AND REASON OF MAN GROUNDS ON WHICH MAN HAS
BEEN REFERRED TO A DISTINCT KINGDOM OF NATURE IMMATERIAL
PRINCIPLE COMMON TO MAN AND ANIMALS NON-DISCOVERY OF IN
TERMEDIATE LINKS AMONG FOSSIL ANTHROPOMORPHOUS SPECD3S
HALLAM ON THE COMPOUND NATURE OF MAN, AND HIS PLACE IN
THE CREATION GREAT INEQUALITY OF MENTAL ENDOWMENT IN
DIFFERENT HUMAN RACES AND INDIVIDUALS DEVELOPED BY VARIATION
AND ORDINARY GENERATION HOW FAR A CORRESPONDING DIVERGENCE
IN PHYSICAL STRUCTURE MAY RESULT FROM THE WORKING OF THE
SAME CAUSES CONCLUDING REMARKS.
SOME of the opponents of transmutation, who are well
versed in Natural History, admit that though that doc
trine is untenable, it is not without its practical advantages
as a ' useful working hypothesis,' often suggesting good ex
periments and observations, and aiding us to retain in the
memory a multitude of facts respecting the geographical
distribution of genera, and species, both of animals and
plants, and the succession in time of organic remains, and
many other phenomena which, but for such a theory, would
be wholly without a common bond of relationship.
It is in fact conceded by many eminent zoologists and
472 THEOKY OF PROGRESSION. CHAP. XXTV.
botanists, as before explained, that whatever may be the
nature of the species-making power or law, its effects are of
such a character as to imitate the results which variation,
guided by natural selection, would produce, if only we could
assume with certainty that there are no limits to the varia
bility of species. But as the anti-transmutationists are per
suaded that such limits do exist, they regard the hypothesis
as simply a provisional one, and expect that it will one day
be surperseded by another cognate theory, which will not
require us to assume the former continuousness of the
links which have connected the past and present states
of the organic world, or the outgoing with the incoming
species.
In like manner, many of those who hesitate to give in
their full adhesion to the doctrine of progression, the other
twin branch of the developement theory, and who even object
to it, as frequently tending to retard the reception of new
facts supposed to militate against opinions solely founded on
negative evidence, are, nevertheless, agreed that on the whole
it is of great service in guiding our speculations. Indeed, it
cannot be denied that a theory which establishes a con
nection between the absence of all relics of vertebrata in the
oldest fossiliferous rocks, and the presence of man's remains in
the newest, which affords a more than plausible explanation of
the successive appearance in strata of intermediate age of the
fish, reptile, bird, and rnammifer, has no ordinary claims to
our favour as comprehending the largest number of positive
and negative facts gathered from all parts o*f the globe, and
extending over countless ages, that science has perhaps ever
attempted to embrace in one grand generalisation.
But will not transmutation, if adopted, require us to
include the human race in the same continuous series of
developements, so that we must hold that man himself has
been derived by an unbroken line of descent from some one
CHAP. xxiv. SYSTEMS OF CLASSIFICATION. 473
of the inferior animals? We certainly cannot escape from
such a conclusion without abandoning many of the weightiest
arguments which have been urged in support of variation
and natural selection, considered as the subordinate causes
by which new types have been gradually introduced into the
earth. Many of the gaps which separate the most nearly
allied genera and orders of mammalia are, in a physical
point of view, as wide as those which divide man from the
mammalia most nearly akin to him, and the extent of his
isolation, whether we regard his whole nature or simply his
corporeal attributes, must be considered before we can discuss
the bearing of transmutation upon his origin and place in
the creation.
Systems of Classification.
In order to qualify ourselves to judge of the degree of
affinity in physical organisation between Man and the lower
animals, we cannot do better than study those systems of
classification which have been proposed by the most eminent
teachers of natural history. Of these an elaborate and
faithful summary has recently been drawn up by the late
Isidore Geoffrey St. Hilaire, which the reader will do well
to consult.*
He begins by passing in review numerous schemes of
classification, each of them having some merit, and most
of which have been invented with a view of assigning to
Man a separate place in the system of Nature, as, for
example, by dividing animals into rational and irrational, or
the whole organic world into three kingdoms, the human, the
animal, and the vegetable, an arrangement defended on the
ground that Man is raised as much by his intelligence above
the animals as are these by their sensibility above plants.
* Histoire Naturale Generale des Kgnes organiques. Paris, vol. ii. 1856.
474 LINNJ3AN CLASSIFICATION OF MAN. CHAP. xxiv.
Admitting that these schemes are not unphilosophical, as
duly recognising the double nature of Man (his moral and
intellectual, as well as his physical attributes), Isidore Gr.
St. Hilaire observes that little knowledge has been im
parted by them. We have gained, he says, much more from
those masters of the science who have not attempted any
compromise between two distinct orders of ideas, the physical
and psychological, and who have confined their attention
strictly to Man's physical relation to the lower animals.
Linnaeus led the way in this field of enquiry by comparing
Man and the apes, in the same manner as he compared these
last with the carnivores, ruminants, rodents, or any other
division of warm-blooded quadrupeds. After several modifi
cations of his original scheme, he ended by placing Man as
one of the many genera in his order Primates, which
embraced not only the apes and lemurs, but the bats also,
as he found these last to be nearly allied to some of the
lowest forms of the monkeys. But all modern naturalists, who
retain the order Primates, agree to exclude from it the bats
or cheiroptera ; and most of them class Man as one of several
families of the order Primates. In this, as in most systems
of classification, the families of modern zoologists and botanists
correspond with the genera of Linnseus.
Blumenbach, in 1779, proposed to deviate from this course,
and to separate Man from the apes as an order apart, under
the name of Bimana, or two-handed. In making this innova
tion he seems at first to have felt that it could not be
justified without calling in psychological considerations to his
aid, to strengthen those which were purely anatomical ; for,
in the earliest edition of his s Manual of Natural History/
he defined Man to be ' animal rationale, loquens, erectum,
bimanum,' whereas in later editions he restricted himself
entirely to the two last characters, namely, the erect position
and the two hands, or 4 animal erectum, bimamun.'
CHAP. xxiv. OEDER BIMANA OF BLUMENBACH. 475
The terms 'bimanous' and 'quadrumanous' had been al
ready employed by BufTon, in 1766, but not applied in a strict
zoological classification till so used by Blumenbach. Twelve
years later, Cuvier adopted the same order Bimana for the
human family, while the apes, monkeys, and lemurs consti
tuted a separate order, called Quadrumana.
Eespecting this last innovation, Isidore GK St. Hilaire asks,
' How could such a division stand, repudiated as it was by
the anthropologists in the name of the moral and intellectual
supremacy of Man ; and by the zoologists, on the ground of
its incompatibility with natural affinities and with the true
principles of classification ? Separated as a group of ordinal
value, placed at the same distance from the ape as the latter
from the carnivore, Man is at once too near and too distant
from the higher mammalia ; too near if we take into ac
count those elevated faculties, which, raising Man above all
other organised beings, accord to him not only the first, but
a separate place in the creation, too far if we merely con
sider the organic affinities which unite him with the quadru-
mana ; with the apes especially, which, in a purely physical
point of view, approach Man more nearly than they do the
lemurs.
f What, then, is this order of Bimana of Blumenbach and
Cuvier ? An impracticable compromise between two oppo
site and irreconcilable systems between two orders of ideas
which are clearly expressed in the language of natural history
by these two words : the human kingdom and the human
family. It is one of those would-be via media propositions
which, once seen through, satisfy no one, precisely because
they are intended to please everybody ; half-truths, perhaps,
but also half-falsehoods ; for what, in science, is a half-truth
but an error ? '
Isidore Gr. St. Hilaire then proceeds to show how, in spite
of the great authority of Blumenbach and Cuvier, a large
476 TERM c QUADRUMANOUS,' CHAP. XXTV.
proportion of modern zoologists of note have rejected the
order Bimana, and have regarded Man simply as a family
of one and the same order, Primates.
Term ' QuadrumanousJ why deceptive.
Even the term c Quadrumanous ' has lately been shown by
Professor Huxley, in a lecture delivered by him in the spring
of 1860-61, which I had the good fortune to hear, to have
proved a fertile source of popular delusion, conveying ideas
which the great anatomists Blumenbach and Cuvier never
entertained themselves, namely, that in the so-called
Quadrumana the extremities of the hind-limbs bear a real
resemblance to the human hands, instead of corresponding
anatomically with the human feet.
As this subject bears very directly on the question, how
far Man is entitled, in a purely zoological classification, to
rank as an order apart, I shall proceed to cite, in an abridged
form, the words of the lecturer above alluded to. *
6 To gain,' he observes, ' a precise conception of the resem
blances and differences of the hand and foot, and of the
distinctive characters of each, we must look below the skin,
and compare the bony framework and its motor apparatus in
each.
( The foot of Man is distinguished from his hand by
6 1. The arrangement of the tarsal bones.
6 2. By having a short flexor and a short extensor muscle
of the digits.
( 3. By possessing the muscle termed peronceus longus.
And if we desire to ascertain whether the terminal division
* Professor Huxley's third lecture been embodied with the rest of the
1 On the Motor Organs of Man com- course in his forthcoming work, en-
pared with those of other Animals,' de- titled, ' Evidence as to Man's Place in
livered in the Eoyal School of Mines, Nature.' Williams & Norgate, London.
in Jermyn Street (March 1861), has
CHAP. xxiv. WHY DECEPTIVE. 477
of a limb in other animals is to be called a foot or a hand, it
is by the presence or absence of these characters that we
must be guided, and not by the mere proportions, and greater
or lesser mobility of the great toe, which may vary indefi
nitely without any fundamental alteration in the structure of
the foot. Keeping these considerations in mind, let us now
turn to the limbs of the Gorilla. The terminal division of
the fore-limb presents no difficulty bone for bone, and
muscle for muscle, are found to be arranged precisely as in
Man, or with such minute differences as are found as varieties
in Man. The Gorilla's hand is clumsier, heavier, and has a
thumb somewhat shorter in proportion than that of Man;
but no one has ever doubted its being a true hand.
( At first sight, the termination of the hind-limb of the
Gorilla looks very hand-like, and as it is still more so in the
lower apes, it is not wonderful that the appellation " Quadru-
mana," or four-handed creatures, adopted from the older
anatomists by Blumenbach, and unfortunately rendered
current by Cuvier, should have gained such wide acceptance
as a name for the ape order. But the most cursory anatomi
cal investigation at once proves, that the resemblance of the
so-called " hind-hand " to a true hand is only skin deep,
and that, in all essential respects, the hind-limb of the Gorilla
is as truly terminated by a foot as that of Man. The tarsal
bones, in all important circumstances of number, disposition,
and form, resemble those of Man. The metatarsals and
digits, on the other hand, are proportionally longer and
more slender, while the great toe is not only proportionally
shorter and weaker, but its metatarsal bone is united by a
far more movable joint with the tarsus. At the game
time, the foot is set more obliquely upon the leg than in
Man.
( As to the muscles, there is a short flexor, a short extensor,
and a peronseus longus, while the tendons of the long flexors
478 DIFFERENCES OF HAND AND FOOT CHAP. xxiv.
of the great toe and of the other toes are united together
and into an accessory fleshy bundle.
6 The hind-limb of the Gorilla, therefore, ends in a true
foot with a very movable great toe. It is a prehensile foot, if
you will, but is in no sense a hand : it is a foot which differs
from that of Man in no fundamental character, but in mere
proportions degree of mobility and secondary arrange
ment of its parts.
'It must not be supposed, however, that because I speak
of these differences as not fundamental, that 1 wish to under
rate their value. They are important enough in their way,
the structure of the foot being in strict correlation with that
of the rest of the organism ; but after all, regarded anatomi
cally, the resemblances between the foot of Man and the foot
of the Grorilla are far more striking and important than the
differences.' *
After dwelling on some points of anatomical detail, highly
important, but for which I have not space here, the Professor
continues : Throughout all these modifications, it must be
recollected that the foot loses no one of its essential cha
racters. Every monkey and lemur exhibits the characteristic
arrangement of tarsal bones, possesses a short flexor and
short extensor muscle, and a peronseus longus. Varied as
the proportions and appearance of the organ may be, the
terminal division of the hind-limb remains in plan and prin
ciple of construction a foot, and never in the least degree
approaches a hand.'f For these reasons, Professor Huxley
rejects the term * Quadrumana,' as leading to serious mis
conception, and regards Man as one of the families of the
Primates. This method of classification he shows to be
equally borne out by an appeal to another character on which
so much reliance has always been placed in classification,
* Professor Huxley, ibid. f Ibid.
CHAP. XXTV. COMMON TO MAN AND THE APES. 479
as affording in the mammalia the most trustworthy indica
tions of affinity, namely, the dentition.
' The number of teeth in the Gorilla and all the Old World
monkeys except the lemurs is thirty-two, the same as in
Man, and the general pattern of their crowns the same.
But besides other distinctions, the canines in all but Man
project in the upper or lower jaws almost like tusks. But all
the American apes have four more teeth in their permanent
set, or thirty-eight in all, so that they differ in this respect
more from the Old World apes than do these last from Man.
If therefore, by reference to this character, we place Man
in a separate order, we must make several orders for the
apes, monkeys, and lemurs, and so, in regard to the structure
of the hands and feet before alluded to, ( the Gorilla differs
far more from some of the quadrumana than he differs from
Man.' Indeed, Professor Huxley contends that there is more
difference between the hand and foot of the Gorilla and those
of the Orang, one of the anthropomorphous apes, than
between those of the Gorilla and Man, for 'the thumb
of the Orang differs by its shortness and by the absence of
any special long flexor muscle from that of the Gorilla more
than it differs from that of Man.' The carpus also of the
Orang, like that of most lower apes, contains nine bones,
while in the Gorilla, as in Man and the Chimpanzee, there are
only eight.' Other characters are also given to show that
the Orang's foot separates it more widely from the Gorilla
than that of the Gorilla separates that ape from Man. In
some of the lower apes, the divergence from the human type
of hand and foot, as well as from those of the Gorilla, is still
greater, as, for example, in the spider-monkey and marmoset.*
If the muscles, viscera, or any other part of the animal
fabric, including the brain, be compared, the results are
declared to be similar.
* Huxley, ibid. p. 29.
480 STRUCTURE OF THE HUMAN BRAIN. CHAP. xxiv.
Whether the Structure of the Human Brain entitles Man
to Form a distinct Sub-class of the Mammalia.
When, in consequence of these and many other zoological
considerations, the order Bimana had already been declared
in 1856, by Isidore Gr. St. Hilaire, in his history of the science
above quoted (p. 473), 'to have become obsolete,' even
though sanctioned by the great names of Blumenbach and
Cuvier, the reader may imagine the surprise excited in the
scientific world when Professor Owen announced, in the year
following the publication of Gr. St. Hilaire's work, that he
had been led by purely anatomical considerations to sepa
rate Man from the other Primates and from the mammalia
generally as a distinct sub-class, thus departing farther from
the classification of Blumenbach and Cuvier than they had
ventured to do from that of Linnaeus.
The proposed innovation was based chiefly on three cerebral
characters belonging, it was alleged, exclusively to Man, and
thus described in the following passages of a memoir com
municated to the Linnasan Society in 1857, in which all the
mammalia were divided, according to the structure of the
brain, into four sub-classes, represented by the kangaroo, the
beaver, the ape, and Man, respectively :
* In Man, the brain presents an ascensive step in develope-
ment, higher and more strongly marked than that by which
the preceding sub-class was distinguished from the one below
it. Not only do the cerebral hemispheres overlap the olfac
tory lobes and cerebellum, but they extend in advance of the
one and farther back than the other. Their posterior de-
velopement is so marked, that anatomists have assigned to
that part the character of a third lobe ; it is peculiar to the
genus Homo, and equally peculiar is the " posterior horn of
the lateral ventricle " and the " hippocampus minor " which
characterises the hind-lobe of each hemisphere. The super-
CHAP. xxiv. SUB-CLASS OF THE MAMMALIA. 481
ficial grey matter of the cerebrum, through the number and
depth of its convolutions, attains its maximum of extent
in Man.
6 Peculiar mental powers are associated with this highest
form of brain, and their consequences wonderfully illustrate
the value of the cerebral character ; according to my estimate
of which, I am led to regard the genus Homo as not merely a
representative of a distinct order, but of a distinct sub-class
of the mammalia, for which I propose the name of "Archen-
cephala" '*
The above definition is accompanied in the same memoir
by the following note : 'Not being able to appreciate, or
conceive, of the distinction between the psychical phenomena
of a chimpanzee and of a Boschisman, or of an Aztec with
arrested brain-growth, as being of a nature so essential as to
preclude a comparison between them, or as being other than
a difference of degree, I cannot shut my eyes to the signifi
cance of that all-pervading similitude of structure every
tooth, every bone, strictly homologous which makes the
determination of the difference between Homo and Pithecus
the anatomist's difficulty ; and therefore, with every respect
for the author of the "Kecords of Creation,"f I follow Linnaeus
and Cuvier in regarding mankind as a legitimate subject of
zoological comparison and classification.'
To illustrate the difference between the human and Simian
brain, Professor Owen gave figures of the negro's brain as
represented by Tiedemann, an original one of a South
American monkey, Midas rufimanus, and one of the chim
panzee, fig. 54, p. 482, from a memoir published in 1849 by
MM. Schroeder van der Kolk and M. Vrolik.J
* Owen, Proceedings of the Linnaean J Comptes rendus de 1' Academic
Society, London, vol. viii. p. 20. Koyale des Sciences, vol. xiii. Am-
f The late Archbishop of Canter- sterdam.
bury, Dr. Sumner.
I I
482
STRUCTURE OF BRAIN
CHAP. XXIV.
Fig. 54
Upper surface of brain of China
panzee, distorted (from Schroeder
van der Kolk and Vrolik).
A. Left cerebral hemisphere.
B. Eight ditto.
c. Cerebellum displaced.
Fig. 55
Side view of same (from
Schroeder van der Kolk and
Vrolik), showing at e the ex
tension of the displaced cere
bellum beyond the cerebrum
at d.
Fig. 56
Correct side view of Chimpan
zee's brain (from Gratiolet),
showing the backward extension
of the cerebrum at d, beyond the
cerebellum at e.
ff. Fissure of Sylvius.
CHAP. XXIV.
OF MAN AND APES COMPAKED.
483
Fig. 57.
Correct view of upper surface of Chimpanzee's brain (from G-ratiolet),
in which the cerebrum covers and conceals the cerebellum.
Fig. 58
Side view of human brain (from Gratiolet), namely, that of the bush-
woman called the Hottentot Venus.
A. Left cerebral hemisphere. c. Cerebellum.
//. Fissure of Sylvius.
Scale of the five figures, from 54 to 58, half the diameter of the natural size.
112
484 STRUCTURE OF BRAIN CHAP. xxiv.
The selection of the last-mentioned figure was most unfor
tunate, for three years before, M. Gratiolet, the highest
authority in cerebral anatomy of our age, had, in his splendid
work on ( The Convolutions of the Brain in Man and the
Primates' (Paris, 1854), pointed out that, though this
engraving faithfully expressed the cerebral foldings as seen
on the surface, it gave a very false idea of the relative
position of the several parts of the brain, which, as very
commonly happens in. such preparations, had shrunk and
greatly sunk down by their own weight.*
Anticipating the serious mistakes which would arise from
this inaccurate representation of the brain of the ape, pub
lished under the auspices of men so deserving of trust as the
two above-named Dutch anatomists, M. Gratiolet thought it
expedient, by way of warning to his readers, to repeat their in
correct figures (figs. 54 and 55, p. 482), and to place by the side
of them two correct views (57, p. 483, and 56, p. 482) of the
brain of the same ape. By reference to these illustrations,
as well as to fig. 58, p. 483, the reader will see not only the
contrast of the relative position of the cerebrum and cere
bellum, as delineated in the natural as well as in the distorted
state, but also the remarkable general correspondence be
tween the chimpanzee brain and that of the human subject
in everything save in size. The human brain (fig. 58) here
given, by Gratiolet, is that of an African bushwoman,
called the Hottentot Venus, who was exhibited formerly
in London, and who died in Paris.
Kespecting this striking analogy of cerebral structure in
Man and the apes, Gratiolet says, in the work above cited :
6 The convoluted brain of Man and the smooth brain of the
* Gratiolet' s words are : ' Les plis profondement affaisse, aussi la forme
cerebraux du chimpanze y sont fort generale du cerveau est-elle rendue,
bien etudies, malheureusement le cer- dans lenrs planches, d'une maniere
veau qui leur a servi de modele etait tout-a-fait fausse.' Ibid. p. 18.
CHAP. xxiv. OF MAN AND APES COMPARED. 485
marmoset resemble each other by the quadruple character of
a rudimentary olfactory lobe, a posterior lobe completely
covering the cerebellum, a well-defined fissure of Sylvius,
(//,fig. 56,) and lastly, a posterior horn in the lateral ventricle.
These characters are not met with together, except in Man
and the apes.'*
In reference to the other figure of a monkey given by
Professor Owen, namely, that of the Midas, one of the
Marmosets, he states, in 1857 as he had done in 1837,
that the posterior part of the cerebral hemispheres ( extends,
as in most of the quadrumana, over the greater part of the
cerebellum.'^ In 1859, in his Eeade Lecture, delivered to
the University of Cambridge, the only illustration which he
gave of an ape's brain was a reproduction of that distorted
one of the Dutch anatomists already cited (fig. 54, p. 482).
Two years later, Professor Huxley, in a memoir ' On the
Zoological Kelations of Man with the Lower Animals,' took
occasion to refer to Gratiolet's warning, and to cite his
criticism on the Dutch plates ; J but this reminder appears
to have been overlooked by Professor Owen, who six months
later came out with a new paper on ( The Cerebral Character
of Man and the Ape,' in. which he repeated the incorrect re
presentation of Schroeder van der Kolk and Vrolik, associating
it with Tiedemann's figure of a negro's brain, expressly to
show the relative and different extent to which the cerebellum
is overlapped by the cerebrum in the two cases respectively.
In the ape's brain as thus depicted, the portion of the cere
bellum left uncovered is greater than in the lemurs, the lowest
type of Primates, and almost as large as in the rodentia, or
some of the lowest grades of the mammalia.
* Gratiolet, ibid. Avant-propos, J Huxley, Natural History Keview,
p. 2, 1854. January 7, 1861, p. 76.
f Proceedings of the Linnsean So- Annals and Magazine of Natural
ciety, 1857, p. 18, and Philosophical History, vol. vii. p. 456, and PI. XX.,
Transactions, 1837, p. 93. June 1861.
486 STRUCTURE OF BRAIN. CHAP. xxiv.
When the Dutch naturalists above mentioned found their
figures so often appealed to as authority, by one the weight of
whose opinion on such matters they well knew how to ap
preciate, they resolved to do their best towards preventing the
public from being misled. Accordingly, they addressed to
the Eoyal Academy of Amsterdam a memoir s On the brain
of an Orang-outang ' which had just died in the Zoological
Gardens of that city.* The dissection of this ape, in 1861,
fully bore out the general conclusions at which they had
previously arrived in 1849, as to the existence both in the
human and the simian brain of the three characters, which
Professor Owen had represented as exclusively appertaining
to Man, namely, the occipital or posterior lobe, the hippo
campus minor, and the posterior cornu. These last two
features consist of certain cavities and furrows in the posterior
lobes, which are caused by the foldings of the brain, and are
only visible when it is dissected. MM. Schroeder van der
Kolk and Vrolik took this opportunity of candidly confessing,
that M. Grratiolet's comments on the defects of their two
figures (figs. 54 and 55) were perfectly just, and they ex
pressed regret that Professor Owen should have overstated
the differences existing between the brain of Man and the
Quadrumana, 'led astray, as they supposed, by his zeal to
combat the Darwinian theory respecting the transformation
of species,' a doctrine against which they themselves pro
tested strongly, saying that it belongs to a class of specula
tions which are sure to be revived from time to time, and
are always 'peculiarly seductive to young and sanguine
minds.' f
As the two memoirs before alluded to by us (p. 408), the
one by Mr. Darwin on ( Natural Selection,' and the other by
Mr. Wallace ' On the Tendency of Varieties to depart inde-
* This paper is reprinted in the tory Eeview for January 1862, vol. ii.
original French, in the Natural His- p. 111. f Ibid. p. 114.
CHAP. xxiv. OF MAN AND APES COMPARED. 487
finitely from the original Type,' did not appear till 1858, a
year after Professor Owen's classification of the mammalia,
and as Darwin's ' Origin of Species ' was not published till
another year had elapsed, we cannot accept the explanation
above offered to us of the causes which led the founder of
the sub-class Archencephala to seek for new points of dis
tinction between the human and simian brains; but the
Dutch anatomists may have fallen into this anachronism by
having just read, in the paper by Professor Owen in the
Annals, some prefatory allusions to f the Vestiges of Creation,
'Natural Selection, and the question whether man be or be
not a descendant of the ape.'
The number of original and important memoirs to which
this discussion on the cerebral relations of Man to the Pri
mates has already given rise in less than five years, must
render the controversy for ever memorable in the history of
Comparative Anatomy.*
In England alone, no less than fifteen genera of the Pri
mates (the subjects having been almost all furnished by that
admirable institution, the Zoological Gardens of London)
have been anatomically examined, and they include nearly
all the leading types of structure of the Old and New
World apes and monkeys, from the most anthropoid form to
that farthest removed from Man ; in other words, from the
Chimpanzee to the Lemur. These are
Troglodytes (Chimpanzee).
Pithecus (Orang).
Hylobates (Gibbon).
Semnopithecus.
Cercopithecus.
Macacus.
Cynocephalus (Baboon).
* Eolleston, Natural History Ee- Transactions, 1862.) Id. on Javan
view, April 1861. Huxley, on Brain Loris (Proceedings of the Zoological
of Ateles, Zoological Proceedings, Society, 1862). Id. on Anatomy of
June 1861. Flower, Posterior Lobe Pithecia (ibid. December 1862).
in Quadrumana, &c. (Philosophical
488 STEUCTUEE OF BBAIN CHAP. xxiv.
Aides (Spider Monkey).
Cebus (Capuchin Monkey).
Pitheda (Saki).
Nyctipithecus (Douricouli).
Hapale (Marmoset).
Otolicnus.
Lemur.
In July, 1861, Mr. Marshall, in a paper on the brain of a
young Chimpanzee, which he had dissected immediately after
its death, gave a series of photographic drawings, showing
that when the parts are all in a fresh state, the posterior lobe
of the cerebrum, instead of simply covering the cerebellum, is
prolonged backwards beyond it even to a greater extent than
in Gratiolet's figure, 56, p. 482, and, what is more in point,
in a greater degree relatively speaking (at least in the young
state of the animal) than in Man. In fact, ' the projection is
to the extent of about one-ninth of the total length of the
cerebrum, whereas the average excess of overlapping is only
one-eleventh in the human brain.' *
The same author gives an instructive account of the man
ner in which displacement and distortion take place when
such brains are preserved in spirits as in the ordinary pre
parations of the anatomist.
Mr. Flower, in a recent paper on the posterior lobe of the
cerebrum in the Quadrumana,f remarks, that although
Tiedemann had declared himself unable in 1821 to detect
the hippocampus minor or the posterior cornu of the lateral
ventricle in the brain of a Macacus dissected by him, Cuvier,
nevertheless, mentions the latter as characteristic of Man
and the apes, and M. Serres, in his well-known work on
the brain in 1826, has shown in at least four species of apes
* Natural History Eeview, July of backward extension of the cerebrum
1861, by John Marshall, F.K.S., in some races of Man. Medical Times,
Surgeon to University College Hos- October 1862, p. 419.
pital. See also on this subject Pro- f Philosophical Transactions, 1862,
fessor Rolleston on the slight degree p. 185.
CHAP. xxiv. OF MAN AND APES COMPARED. 489
the presence of both the hippocampus minor and the poste
rior cornu.
Tiedemann had expressly stated that ' the third or hinder
lobe in the ape covered the cerebellum as in Man,'* and as
to his negative evidence in respect to the internal structure
of that lobe, it can have no weight whatever against the
positive proofs obtained to the contrary by a host of able
observers. Even before Tiedemann's work was published,
Kuhl had dissected, in 1820, the brain of the spider-monkey
(Ateles beelzebutli), and had given a figure of a long pos
terior cornu to the lateral ventricle, which he had described
as such.f
The general results arrived at by the English anatomists
already cited, and by Professor Eolleston in various papers
on the same subject, have thus been briefly stated by Pro
fessor Huxley :
6 Every lemur which has yet been examined has its cere
bellum partially uncovered, its posterior lobe with the con
tained posterior cornu and hippocampus minor more or less
rudimentary. Every marmoset, American monkey, Old
World monkey, baboon or man-like ape, on the contrary,
has its cerebellum entirely covered, a large posterior cornu,
and a well-developed hippocampus minor.
' In many of these creatures, such as the Saimiri (Chryso-
thrix), the cerebral lobes overlap and extend much farther
behind the cerebellum in proportion than they do in Man.'J
It is by no means pretended that these conclusions of
British observers as to the affinity in cerebral structure of
Man and the Primates, are new, but, on the contrary, that
they confirm the inductions previously made by the principal
continental teachers of the last and present generations, such
* Tiedemann, Icones cerebri Simi- fart am Main, 1820.
arum, &c., p. 48. { Huxley,
f BeitragezurZoologie,&c., Frank-
490 STRUCTURE OF BRAIN CHAP. xxiv.
as Tiedemann, Cuvier, Serres, Leuret, Wagner, Schroeder van
der Kolk, Vrolik, Grratiolet, and others.
At a late meeting of the British Association (1862), Pro
fessor Owen read a paper e On the brain and limb characters
of the Gorilla as contrasted with those of Man,' * in which,
without alluding to the disclaimer by the Dutch anatomists
of their defective plates, now so widely circulated in Eng
land, he observes, that in the gorilla the cerebrum ' extends
over the cerebellum, not beyond it.' This statement, although
slightly at variance with one published the year before
(1861) by Professor Huxley, who maintains that it does pro
ject beyond, is interesting as correcting the description of the
same brain given by Professor Owen in that year, in a
lecture to the Eoyal Institution, in which a considerable part
of the cerebellum of the gorilla was represented as uncovered.!
In the same memoir, it is remarked, that in the Maimon
Baboon the cerebrum not only covers but f extends backwards
even beyond the cerebellum.' J This baboon, therefore,
possesses a posterior lobe, according to every description
yet given of such a lobe, including a new definition of the
same lately proposed by Professor Owen. For the posterior
lobe was formerly considered to be that part of the cerebrum
which covers the cerebellum, whereas Professor Owen defines
it as that part which covers the posterior third of the cere
bellum, and extends beyond it.
We may, therefore, consider the attempt to distinguish
the brain of Man from that of the ape on the ground of
newly-discovered cerebral characters, presenting differences
in kind, as virtually abandoned by its originator, and if the
* Medical Times and Gazette, Oc- 30, p. 434.
tober 1862, p. 373. j For Beport of Professor Owen's
f Athenaeum Journal Report of Cambridge British Association Paper,
Royal Institution, Lecture, March 23, see Medical Times, October 11, 1862,
1861, and reference to it by Pro- p. 373.
fessor Owen as to Gorilla, ibid. March Annals, ibid. p. 457.
CHAP. xxiv. OF MAN AND APES COMPARED. 491
sub-class Archencephala is to be retained, it must depend on
differences in degree, as, for example, the vast increase of the
brain in Man, as compared with that of the highest ape, ' in
absolute size, and the still greater superiority in relative size
to the bulk and weight of the body.' *
* If we ask why this character, though well known to Cuvier
and other great anatomists before our time, was not consi
dered by them to entitle Man, physically considered, to claim
a more distinct place in the group called Primates, than that
of a separate order, or, according to others, a separate genus
or family only, we shall find the answer thus concisely
stated by Professor Huxley in his new work, before cited :
* So far as I am aware, no human cranium belonging to
an adult man has yet been observed with a less cubical
capacity than 62 cubic inches, the smallest cranium observed
in any race of men, by Morton, measuring 63 cubic inches ;
while on the other hand, the most capacious gorilla skull
yet measured has a content of not more than 34^ cubic
inches. Let us assume, for simplicity's sake, that the
lowest man's skull has twice the capacity of the highest
gorilla's. No doubt this is a very striking difference, but
it loses much of its apparent, systematic value, when viewed
by the light of certain other equally indubitable facts re
specting cranial capacities.
' The first of these is, that the difference in the volume of
the cranial cavity of different races of mankind is far greater,
absolutely, than that between the lowest man and the highest
ape while, relatively, it is about the same; for the largest
human skull measured by Morton contained 114 cubic
inches, that is to say, had very nearly double the capacity of
the smallest, while its absolute preponderance of over 50
cubic inches is far greater than that by which the lowest
* Owen, ibid. p. 373."
492 BRAIN OF MAN AND APE COMPARED. CHAP. xxiv.
adult male human cranium surpasses the largest of the
gorillas (62 32J = 27 J). Secondly, the adult crania of
gorillas which have as yet been measured, differ among
themselves by nearly one-third, the maximum capacity being
34-5 cubic inches, the minimum 24 cubic inches; and,
thirdly, after making all due allowance for difference of size,
the cranial capacities of some of the lower apes fall nearly as
much, relatively, below those of the higher apes, as the latter
fall below man.' *
Are we then to conclude, that differences in mental power
have no intimate connection with the comparative volume of
the brain ? We cannot draw such an inference, because the
highest and most civilised races of Man exceed in the average
of their cranial capacity the lowest races, the European
brain, for example, being larger than that of the negro, and
somewhat more convoluted and less symmetrical, and those
apes, on the other hand, which approach nearest to Man in the
form and volume of their brain being more intelligent than
the Lemurs, or still lower divisions of the mammalia, such as
the Eodents and Marsupials, which have smaller brains. But
the extraordinary intelligence of the elephant and dog, so far
exceeding that of the larger part of the Quadrumana, although
their brains are of a type much more remote from the human,
may serve to convince us how far we are as yet from under
standing the real nature of the dependence of intellectual
superiority on cerebral structure.
Professor Kolleston, in reference to this subject, remarks,
that ' even if it were to be proved that the differences between
Man's brain and that of the ape's are differences entirely of
quantity, there is no reason, in the nature of things, why so
many and such weighty differences in degree should not
amount to a difference in kind.
* Huxley, On the Eelation of Man to the rest cf the Animal Kingdom.
London, 1863.
CHAP. XXIV. INTELLIGENCE OF LOWER ANIMALS. 493
* Differences of degree and differences of kind are, it is true,
mutually exclusive terms in the language of the schools ; but
whether they are so also in the laboratory of Nature, we may
very well doubt.'*
The same physiologist suggests, that as there is con
siderable plasticity in the human frame, not only in youth
and during growth, but even in the adult, we ought
not always to take for granted, as some advocates of the
developement theory seem to do, that each advance in
psychical power depends on an improvement in bodily struc
ture, for why may not the soul, or the higher intellectual and
moral faculties, play the first instead of the second part in a
progressive scheme ?
Intelligence of the lower Animals compared to that of Man.
Ever since the days of Leibnitz, metaphysicians who have
attempted to draw a line of demarcation between the intelli
gence of the lower animals and that of Man, or between
instinct and reason, have experienced difficulties analogous
to those which the modern anatomist encounters when he
tries to distinguish the brain of an ape from that of Man by
some characters more marked than those of mere size and
weight, which vary so much in individuals of the same
species, whether simian or human.
Professor Agassiz, after declaring that as yet we scarcely
possess the most elementary information requisite for a
scientific comparison of the instincts and faculties of animals
with those of Man, confesses that he cannot say in what the
mental faculties of a child differ from those of a young chim
panzee. He also observes, that ( the range of the passions of
* Keport of a Lecture delivered at Man and Animals. Medical Gazette,
the Koyal Institution, by Professor March 15, 1862, p. 262.
George Eolleston, On the Brain of
494 INTELLIGENCE OP LOWER ANIMALS. CHAP. xxiv.
animals is as extensive as that of the human mind, and I am
at a loss to perceive a difference of kind between them, how
ever much they may differ in degree, and in the manner in
which they are expressed. The gradations of the moral
faculties among the higher animals and Man are, moreover,
so imperceptible, that to deny to the first a certain sense of
responsibility and consciousness, would certainly be an exag
geration of the difference between animals and Man. There
exists, besides, as much individuality within their respective
capabilities among animals as among Man, as every sports
man, or every keeper of menageries, or every farmer and
shepherd can testify, who has had a large experience with wild,
or tamed, or domesticated animals. This argues strongly in
favour of the existence in every animal of an immaterial
principle, similar to that which, by its excellence and superior
endowments, places Man so much above animals. Yet the
principle exists unquestionably, and whether it be called
soul, reason, or instinct, it presents, in the whole range of
organised beings, a series of phenomena closely linked to
gether, and upon it are based not only the higher manifes
tations of the mind, but the very permanence of the specific
differences which characterise every organ. Most of the
arguments of philosophy in favour of the immortality of Man
apply equally to the permanency of this principle in other
living beings.' *
Professor Huxley, when commenting on a passage in
Professor Owen's memoir, above cited (p. 481), argues that
there is a unity in psychical as in physical plan among ani
mated beings, and adds, that although he cannot go so far as
to say that 'the determination of the difference between
Homo and Pithecus is the anatomist's difficulty,' yet no
impartial judge can doubt that the roots, as it were, of those
* Contributions to the Natural History of the United States of North
America, vol. i. part i. pp. 60, 64.
CHAP. xxiv. MAN A DISTINCT KINGDOM. 495
great faculties which confer on Man his immeasurable supe
riority above all other animate things are traceable far down
into the animate world. The dog, the cat, and the parrot,
return love for our love, and hatred for our hatred. They are
capable of shame and of sorrow, and, though they may have
no logic nor conscious ratiocination, no one who has watched
their ways can doubt that they possess that power of rational
cerebration which evolves reasonable acts from the premises
furnished by the senses a process which takes fully as large
a share as conscious reason in human activity.*
Grounds for referring Man to a distinct Kingdom of
Nature.
None of the authors above cited, while they admit so fully
the analogy which exists between the faculties of Man and
the inferior animals, are disposed to underrate the enormous
gap which separates Man from the brutes, and if they
scarcely allow him to be referable to a distinct order, and
much less to a separate sub-class, on purely physical grounds,
it does not follow that they would object to the reasoning of
M. Quatrefages, who says, in his work on the Unity of the
Human Species, that Man must form a kingdom by himself
if once we permit his moral and intellectual endowments to
have their due weight in classification.
As to his organisation, he observes, 'We find in the
mammalia nearly absolute identity of anatomical structure,
bone for bone, muscle for muscle, nerve for nerve
similar organs performing like functions. It is not by a
vertical position on his feet, the os sublime of Ovid, which
he shares with the penguin, nor by his mental faculties,
which, though more developed, are fundamentally the same
* Natural History Keview, No. 1, p. 68, January 1861.
496 MAN A DISTINCT KINGDOM. CHAP. xxiv.
as those of animals, nor by his powers of perception, will,
memory, and a certain amount of reason, nor by articulate
speech, which he shares with birds and some mammalia, and
by which they express ideas comprehended not only by
individuals of their own species but often by Man, nor is it
by the faculties of the heart, such as love and hatred, which
are also shared by quadrupeds and birds, but it is by some
thing completely foreign to the mere animal, and belonging
exclusively to Man, that we must establish a separate king
dom for him (p. 21). These distinguishing characters,' he
goes on to say, ( are the abstract notion of good and evil,
right and wrong, virtue and vice, or the moral faculty, and a
belief in a world beyond ours, and in certain mysterious
beings, or a Being of a higher nature than ours, whom we
ought to fear or revere ; in other words, the religious faculty.'
P. 23.
By these two attributes, the moral and the religious, not
common to man and the brutes, M. Quatrefages proposes to
distinguish the human from the animal kingdom.
But he omits to notice one essential character, which
Dr. Sumner, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, brought out
in strong relief fifty years ago in his ' Eecords of Creation.'
c There are writers,' he observes, ' who have taken an extra
ordinary pleasure in levelling the broad distinction which
separates Man from the Brute Creation. Misled to a false
conclusion by the infinite variety of Nature's productions,
they have described a chain of existence connecting the
vegetable with the animal world, and the different orders of
animals one with another, so as to rise by an almost imper
ceptible gradation from the tribe of Simise to the lowest of
the human race, and from these upwards to the most refined.
But if a comparison were to be drawn, it should be taken,
not from the upright form, which is by no means confined to
mankind, nor even from the vague term reason, which cannot
CHAP. xxiv. MAN'S IMPROVABLE REASON. 497
always be accurately separated from instinct, but from that
power of progressive and improvable reason, which is Man's
peculiar and exclusive endowment.
' It has been sometimes alleged, and may be founded on
fact, that there is less difference between the highest brute
animal and the lowest savage than between the savage and
the most improved Man. But, in order to warrant the pre
tended analogy, it ought to be also true that this lowest
savage is no more capable of improvement than the Chim
panzee or Orang-outang.
' Animals,' he adds, ' are born what they are intended to
remain. Nature has bestowed upon them a certain rank,
and limited the extent of their capacity by an impassible
decree. Man she has empowered and obliged to become the
artificer of his own rank in the scale of beings by the peculiar
gift of improvable reason.' *
We have seen that Professor Agassiz, in his Essay on Classi
fication, above cited (p. 494), speaks of the existence in every
animal of ( an immaterial principle similar to that which, by
its excellence and superior endowments, places man so much
above animals ; ' and he remarks, ' that most of the arguments
of philosophy in favour of the immortality of man, apply
equally to the permanency of this principle in other living
beings.'
Although the author has no intention by this remark to
impugn the truth of the great doctrine alluded to, it may be
well to observe, that if some of the arguments in favour of a
future state are applicable in common to man and the lower
animals, they are by no means those which are the weightiest
and most relied on. It is no doubt true that, in both, the
identity of the individual outlasts many changes of form
and structure which take place during the passage from the
* Records of Creation, vol. ii. chap. ii. 2nd ed. 1816.
K K
498 ABSENCE OF INTERMEDIATE CHAP. xxiv.
infant to the adult state, and from that to old age, and the
loss again and again of every particle of matter which had
entered previously into the composition of the body during
its growth, and the substitution of new elements in their
place, while the individual remains always the same, carries
the analogy a step farther. But beyond this we cannot push
the comparison. We cannot imagine this world to be a place
of trial and moral discipline for any of the inferior animals,
nor can any of them derive comfort and happiness from faith
in a hereafter. To man alone is given this belief, so con
sonant to his reason, and so congenial to the religious -senti
ments implanted by nature in his soul, a doctrine which
tends to raise him morally and intellectually in the scale of
being, and the fruits of which are, therefore, most opposite
in character to those which grow out of error and delusion.
The opponents of the theory of transmutation sometimes
argue that, if there had been a passage by variation from the
lower Primates to Man, the geologist ought ere this to have
detected some fossil remains of the intermediate links of the
chain. But what we have said respecting the absence of
gradational forms between the recent and pliocene mammalia
(p. 436), may serve to show the weakness in the present state
of science of any argument based on such negative evidence,
especially in the case of man, since we have not yet searched
those pages of the great book of nature, in which alone we
have any right to expect to find records of the missing links
alluded to. The countries of the anthropomorphous apes
are the tropical regions of Africa, and the islands of Borneo
and Sumatra, lands which may be said to be quite unknown
in reference to their pliocene and post-pliocene mammalia.
Man is an old world type, and it is not in Brazil, the only
equatorial region where ossiferous caverns have yet been ex
plored, that the discovery, in a fossil state, of extinct forms
allied to the human, could be looked for. Lund, a Danish
CHAP. xxiv. FOSSIL, ANTHROPOMORPHOUS SPECIES. 499
naturalist, found in Brazil, not only extinct sloths and arma-
dilloes, but extinct genera of fossil monkeys, but all of the
American type, and, therefore, widely departing in their den
tition and some other characters from the Primates of the old
world.*
At some future day, when many hundred species of extinct
quadrumana may have been brought to light, the naturalist
may speculate with advantage on this subject ; at present we
must be content to wait patiently, and not to allow our judge
ment respecting transmutation to be influenced by the want
of evidence, which it would be contrary to analogy to look
for in post- pliocene deposits in any districts, which as yet we
have carefully examined. For, as we meet with extinct
kangaroos and wombats in Australia, extinct llamas and
sloths in South America, so in equatorial Africa, and in
certain islands of the East Indian Archipelago, may we hope
to meet hereafter with lost types of the anthropoid Primates,
allied to the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang-outang.
Europe, during the pliocene period, seems not to have
enjoyed a climate fitting it to be the habitation of the quad-
rumanous mammalia ; but we no sooner carry back our re
searches into miocene times, where plants and insects, like
those of Oeninghen, and shells, like those of the faluns of the
Loire, would imply a warmer temperature both of sea and
land, than we begin to discover fossil apes and monkeys north
of the Alps and Pyrenees. Among the few species already
detected, two at least belong to the anthropomorphous class.
One of these, the Dryopithecus of Lartet, a gibbon or long-
armed ape, about equal to man in stature, was obtained in the
year 1856 in the upper miocene strata at Sansan, near the
foot of the Pyrenees in the South of France, and one bone
of the same ape is reported to have been since procured from
* See above, p. 479.
K K 2
500 HALLAM ON MAN'S PLACE CHAP. xxiv.
a deposit of corresponding age at Eppelsheim near Darmstadt,
in a latitude answering to that of the southern counties of
England.* But according to the doctrine of progression it
is not in these miocene strata, but in those of pliocene and
post-pliocene date, in more equatorial regions, that there
will be the greatest chance of discovering hereafter some
species more highly organised than the gorilla and chim
panzee.
The only reputed fossil monkey of eocene date, namely,
that found in 1840 at Kyson, in Suffolk, and so determined
by Professor Owen, has recently been pronounced by the
same anatomist, after reexamination, and when he had ampler
materials at his command, to be a pachyderm.
M. Riitimeyer,f however, an able osteologist, referred to in
the earlier chapters of this work, has just announced the dis
covery in eocene strata, in the Swiss Jura, of a monkey allied
to the lemurs, but as he has only obtained as yet a small
fragment of a jaw with three molar teeth, we must wait
for fuller information before we confidently rely on the
claims of his Ccenopithecus lemuroides to take rank as one
of the Primates.
Hallam on Marts place in the Creation.
Hallam, in his ' Literature of Europe,' after indulging in
some profound reflections on 'the thoughts of Pascal,' and
the theological dogmas of his school respecting the fallen
nature of Man, thus speaks of Man's place in the creation :
'It might be wandering from the proper subject of these
volumes if we were to pause, even shortly, to inquire whether,
while the creation of a world so full of evil must ever
remain the most inscrutable of mysteries, we might not be
* Owen, ' Geologist,' November f Rutimeyer, 'Eocene Saugethiere/
1862. &c. Zurich, 1862.
CHAP. xxiv. IN THE CREATION. 501
led some way in tracing the connexion of moral and physical
evil in mankind, with his place in that creation, and es
pecially, whether the law of continuity, which it has not
pleased his Maker to break with respect to his bodily struc
ture, and which binds that, in the unity of one great type, to
the lower forms of animal life by the common conditions of
nourishment, reproduction, and self-defence, has not rendered
necessary both the physical appetites and the propensities
which terminate in self ; whether again, the superior endow
ments of his intellectual nature, his susceptibility of moral
emotion, and of those disinterested affections which, if not
exclusively, he far more intensely possesses than an inferior
being above all, the gifts of conscience and a capacity to
know Grod, might not be expected, even beforehand, by their
conflict with the animal passions, to produce some partial
inconsistencies, some anomalies at least, which he could not
himself explain in so compound a being. Every link in the
long chain of creation does not pass by easy transition into
the next. There are necessary chasms, and, as it were, leaps
from one creature to another, which, though not exceptions
to the law of continuity, are accommodations of -it to a new
series of being. If man was made in the image of Grod, he
was also made in the image of an ape. The framework of
the body of him who has weighed the stars and made the
lightning his slave, approaches to that of a speechless brute,
who wanders in the forests of Sumatra. Thus standing on
the frontier land between animal and angelic natures, what
wonder that he should partake of both ! ' *
The law of continuity here spoken of, as not being violated
by occasional exceptions, or by leaps from one creature to an
other, is not the law of variation and natural selection above
explained (Chap. XXI.), but that unity of plan supposed to
* Hallam, Introduction to the Literature of Europe, &c., voL iv. p. 162.
502 WHETHER THE LAW OF CONTINUITY CONSISTENT CHAP. xxiv.
exist in the Divine Mind, whether realised or not materially
and in the visible creation, of which the 6 links do not
pass by an easy transition ' the one into the other, at least
as beheld by us.
Dr. Asa Gray, an eminent American botanist, to whom we
are indebted for a philosophical essay of great merit on the
Origin of Species by Variation and Natural Selection, has well
observed, when speaking of the axiom of Leibnitz, ( Natura non
agit saltatim,' that nature secures her ends, and makes her dis
tinctions, on the whole, manifest and real, but without any
important breaks or long leaps. e We need not wonder that
gradations between species and varieties should occur, or that
genera and other groups should not be absolutely limited,
though they are represented to be so in our systems. The clas
sifications of the naturalist define abruptly where nature more
or less blends. Our systems are nothing if not definite.'
The same writer reminds us that 'plants and animals are
so different, that the difficulty of the ordinary observer would
be to find points of comparison, whereas, with the naturalist,
it is all the other way. All the broad differences vanish one
by one as we approach the lower confines of the animal and
vegetable kingdoms, and no absolute distinction whatever is
now known between them.'*
The author of an elaborate review of Darwin's ' Origin of
Species,' himself an accomplished geologist, declares that if
we embrace the doctrine of the ( continuous variation of all
organic forms from the lowest to the highest, including man
as the kst link in the chain of being, there must have been
a transition from the instinct of the brute to the noble mind
of man ; and in that case, ( where,' he ( asks,' are the missing
links, and at what point of his progressive improvement did
* Natural Selection not inconsistent Asa Gray. Triibner & Co., London,
with Natural Theology, p. 55, by Dr. 1861.
CHAP. xxiv. WITH BREAKS IN THE SEEIES. 503
man acquire the spiritual part of his being, and become en
dowed with the awful attribute of immortality ? ' *
Before we raise objections of this kind to a scientific hy
pothesis, it would be well to pause and enquire whether there
are no analogous enigmas in the constitution of the world
around us, some of which present even greater difficulties than
that here stated. When we contemplate, for example, the
many hundred millions of human beings who now people the
earth, we behold thousands who are doomed to helpless im
becility, and we may trace an insensible gradation between
them and the half-witted, and from these again to individuals
of perfect understanding, so that tens of thousands must
have existed in the course of ages, who in their moral and
intellectual condition, have exhibited a passage from the ir
rational to the rational, or from the irresponsible to the
responsible. Moreover it has recently been ascertained by
the statistics of our metropolis, a city falling by no means
below the average standard in regard to health, that one
fourth of all the infants which are born, die before they are a
month old ; so that we may safely affirm that millions perish
on the earth in every century, in the first few hours of their
existence. To assign to such individuals their appropriate
psychological place in the creation, is one of the unprofitable
themes on which theologians and metaphysicians have ex
pended much ingenious speculation.
The philosopher, without ignoring these difficulties, does
not allow them to disturb his conviction that ' whatever is, is
right,' nor do they check his hopes and aspirations in regard
to the high destiny of his species ; but he also feels that it is
not for one who is so often confounded by the painful reali
ties of the present, to test the probability of theories respecting
the past, by their agreement or want of agreement with some
* Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life, Frazer's Magazine, July 1860,
p. 88.
504 LAW OF CONTINUITY. CRAP. xxir.
ideal of a perfect universe which those who are opposed to his
opinions may have pictured to themselves.
We may also demur to the assumption that the hypothesis
of variation and natural selection obliges us to assume
that there was an absolutely insensible passage from the
highest intelligence of the inferior animals to the improvable
reason of man. The birth of an individual of transcendent
genius, of parents who have never displayed any intellectual
capacity above the average standard of their age or race, is a
phenomenon not to be lost sight of, when we are conjecturing
whether the successive steps in advance, by which a progres
sive scheme has been developed, may not admit of occasional
strides, constituting breaks in an otherwise continuous series
of psychical changes.
The inventors of useful arts, the poets and prophets of the
early stages of a nation's growth, the promulgators of new
systems of religion, ethics, and philosophy, or of new codes
of laws, have often been looked upon as messengers from
Heaven, and after their death have had divine honours paid
to them, while fabulous tales have been told of the pro
digies which accompanied their birth. Nor can we wonder
that such notions have prevailed when we consider what
important revolutions in the moral and intellectual world
such leading spirits have brought about ; and when we reflect
that mental as well as physical attributes are transmissible
by inheritance, so that we may possibly discern in such leaps
the origin of the superiority of certain races of mankind. In
our own time the occasional appearance of such extraordi
nary mental powers may be attributed to atavism ; but there
must have been a beginning to the series of such rare and
anomalous events. If, in conformity with the theory of
progression, we believe mankind to have risen slowly from
a rude and humble starting point, such leaps may have
CHAP. xxiv. TRANSMUTATION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY. 505
successively introduced not only higher and higher forms and
grades of intellect, but at a much remoter period may have
cleared at one bound the space which separated the highest
stage of the unprogressive intelligence of the inferior animals
from the first and lowest form of improvable reason mani
fested by man.
To say that such leaps constitute no interruption to the
ordinary course of nature, is more than we are warranted in
affirming. In the case of the occasional birth of an indivi
dual of superior genius, there is certainly no break in the
regular genealogical succession ; and when all the mists of
mythological fiction are dispelled by historical criticism,
when it is acknowledged that the earth did not tremble at
the nativity of the gifted infant, and that the face of heaven
was not full of fiery shapes, still a mighty mystery remains
unexplained, and it is the order of the phenomena, and not
their cause, which we are able to refer to the usual course of
nature.
Dr. Asa Gray, in the excellent essay already cited (p. 502),
has pointed out that there is no tendency in the doctrine of
Variation and Natural Selection to weaken the foundations of
Natural Theology ; for, consistently with the derivative hypo
thesis of species, we may hold any of the popular views
respecting the manner in which the changes of the natural
world are brought about. We may imagine ' that events and
operations in general go on in virtue simply of forces commu
nicated at the first, and without any subsequent interference,
or we may hold that now and then, and only now and then,
there is a direct interposition of the Deity ; or, lastly, we may
suppose that all the changes are carried on by the immediate
orderly and constant, however infinitely diversified, action of
the intelligent, efficient Cause.' They who maintain that the
origin of an individual, as well as the origin of a species or
506 DOMINION OF MIND OYER MATTEE. CHAP. xxiv.
a genus, can be explained only by the direct action of the
creative cause, may retain their favourite theory compatibly
with the doctrine of transmutation.
Professor Agassiz, having observed that, 'while human
thought is consecutive, divine thought is simultaneous,' Dr.
Asa Gray has replied that, * if divine thought is simultaneous,
we have no right to affirm the same of divine action.'
The whole course of nature may be the material embodi
ment of a preconcerted arrangement ; and if the succession
of events be explained by transmutation, the perpetual
adaptation of the organic world to new conditions leaves the
argument in favour of design, and therefore of a designer,
as valid as ever; e for to do any work by an instrument must
require, and therefore presuppose, the exertion rather of
more than of less power, than to do it directly.' *
As to the charge of materialism brought against all forms
of the developement theory, Dr. Gray has done well to re
mind us that f of the two great minds of the seventeenth
century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly religious as
well as philosophical, one produced the theory of gravita
tion, the other objected to that theory, that it was subversive
of natural religion.' f
It may be said that, so far from having a materialistic
tendency, the supposed introduction into the earth at succes
sive geological periods of life, sensation, instinct, the
intelligence of the higher mammalia bordering on reason,
and lastly the improvable reason of Man himself, presents
us with a picture of the ever-increasing dominion of mind
over matter.
* Asa Gray, ibid. p. 55. f Ibid, p, 31.
INDEX.
INDEX.
ABB
A BBEVILLE and Amiens, 102
J\. peat of, 109
Agassi/ cited, 105, 226
on Alpine glaciers, 291
classification, 397
immaterial principle in animals,
497
Florida coral reefs, 44
instinct, 493
theory of Glen Koy roads, 256
Age of man in reference to glacial
period, 228
Ages of stone and bronze, 369
Alluvium of Thames, 154
with flint tools, 93, 106, 112-150,
166-169
Alpine erratics on Jura, 294
glacial action, 291, 320
Alternate generation, 421
American Indians, 140
monkeys, dentition of, 479
Amiens flint implements, 95, 114, 132
Amoorland mammals, 158, 440
Anca, Baron, 176
Antiquites Celtiques, 94
Antiquity of Liege cave bones, 73
man, 206, 289, 372, 384
Apes, brain of, compared to human,
480
classification of, 474
list of genera of, 487
Archseopteryx macrurus, 450
Archencephala, 481, 491
BID
Arcy-sur-Yonne, 151
Ardekillen Lake, 30
Aristotle, meteorics, 381
Aryan hypothesis, 455
Aurignac burial place, post-pliocene,
(fig. 25), 182
fossils, antiquity of, 190
Aurochs, 14, 190
Austen, Mr. Godwin, on Kent's hole, 97
marine post -pliocene
shells on Sussex coast,
281
Pease Marsh gravel, 161
Australian skulls, 87
weapons, 113
Aymard, M., 194
pABINGTON, Mr., 425
D Bacton whales, 217
Baillon, M., 126
Bald, Mr., 53
Baltic, brackish waters of, 13, 56
Barrett, Lucas, 451
Bats in islands, 445, 447
Beaches, raised, 57
Beach raised in Fife, 54
Bedford flint tools, 165
Behring's Straits, 367
Belgian caverns, 59
Bell, Mr., on Bos primigenius, 370
Bentham, Mr., 425
Biddenham, near Bedford, 1 63
510
INDEX.
BIE
Bienne, lake of, 29
Bimana, order of, Blumenbach, 4 74
Bimanous, term, 475
Binkhorst, M. Van, 339
Binney, Mr. E., on marine drift shells
in Central England, 270
Birch, Mr., on Egypt, 37
Bison Europseus, 61, 191
Bize, cavern of, 59
Blumenbach's order Bimana, 474
Boetlingk, M., 233
Borreby skull (fig. 5), 85
Bos bison, 14
brachyceros, 24
primigenius, 22, 24
trochoceros, 24
urus, 14
Boucher de Perthes, cited, 94, 109,
113, 121,228
Boulders floating on ice, 361
striated, 304
Brachiopoda fossil, Davidson on, 426
Brain, human structure of, 480
of Bushwoman (fig. 58), 485
chimpanzee (fig. 56), 484 and
(fig. 57) 485
Eolleston on, 492
Brick, burnt, in Egypt, 36
Bristow, H. W., cited, 278
British Isles, map of, 276
in glacial period, 278
Brixham cave, 96
Brocchi on dying out of species, 393
Brongniart, Adolphe, on progression,
398, 404
Bronn on progression, 397
Bronze, age of, 10, 370
Brown, Mr. John, on Shetland insects,
435
Bubalus moschatus, 145, 156
Buchanan, Mr. John, on Glasgow
canoes, 47
Buckland, Dr., 97, 256
Buffalo fossil near Berlin, 156
Bunsen, Baron, cited, 383
Burial rites in post-pliocene period,
1<2
Buried hut in Swedish drift, 240
Busk, Mr., cited, 11,84,86
on Borreby skull, 85
Buteux's sections at St. Acheul, 96,136
CO A
pAGLIAKI, 177
V^ Cairo, 37
Canada, drift of, 354
Canche river, 109
Canoes, buried, of Glasgow, 49
Capercailzie in shell mounds, 15
Carnon, skulls at, 56
Carriden, 51.
Carses of Clyde, Forth, and Tay, 47,
51, 54, 283
Carver, travels in N. America, 189
Cashmere, temple, 45
Caucasus, languages in, 460
Cave deposits, 93
- bear in Brixham Cave, 100
of Neanderthal, 75
at Bankton, 48
Brixham, 96
Cavern of Bize, 59
Chauvaux, 80
Engis, 65
Pondres, near Nismes, 60
Caverns round Liege, 63
Chalk, dislocations of, Denmark, 342
pinnacle at Sherringham, 221
Chambers, Mr. Robert, 241
on parallel roads, 258, 260
Chamblon, pile works, 28
Changes in physical geography, 375
- of level, 110, 286
Charonne, 151
Charpentier on Alpine glaciers, 291
Chavannes, 26
Chilian Andes glaciers, 296
Chillesford beds, 211
Chimpanzee, Marshall on, 488
brain, 484
Chokier cavern, 65, 72
Christol, M., 59
Civilisation, early Egyptian, 380
Classification, systems of, 473
Cleopatra's Baths, 35
Clichy, gravel of, 151
Climate, 368
changes of, 364, 368
of Europe when Amiens' flint
tools embedded, 142
drift of North Ger
many was formed,! 57
Coast ice, transporting power of, 363
of Cornwall, 56
INDEX.
511
COL
Cold, increasing, shown by Norfolk
and Suffolk tertiaries, 210
period in France, 138, 142
: Sicily and Syria, 223
Contorted drift, 222
in North Italy, 308
- strata, Norfolk (figs. 29, 30, 31),
220
at St. Acheul (fig. 21 a), 138
Copford, Essex, 155
Copper, age of, 11
Coral reefs, Florida, 44
Cornwall, coast of, 56
Coscinopora globularis figured, 119
Crag of Suffolk, 209
Crahay, Professor, 339
Crannoges, 29
Crawfurd, Mr., on languages, 455
Creation by variation, 417
of species, 394, 423
Crete, rising of, 178
Cromer forest bed, 212, 214
granite erratics at, 218
section of Norfolk cliffs, at 213
Currents affect climate, 368
Cynotherium, 177
Cyrena fluminalis, 123, 124, 142, 154,
159, 161
figures of, 124
DANISH peat, 8, 372
- shell mounds, 11, 372
Darent, valley of, 161
Darwin, Charles, on beach near Lima,
46
erratics, 270
glaciers of Chilian Andes,
296
origin of species, 408
parallel roads, 257
on progression, 405
Davidson on fossil brachiopoda, 426
Dawkins, Mr., 171
Degeneracy, notion of, controverted,
378
Degradation of structure, 412
Delabeche, Sir H., his map of British
Isles upheaved 600 feet, 275, 279
Delesse, M., analysis of fossil bones
by, 187
ENG
Delta of Mississippi, 42
Nile, 33
Dendrites on flint, figures of 116
Denise fossil man, 194
Deshayes on recent species of shells in
upper miocene strata, 430
Desnoyers, M., on antiquity of human
remains, 61, 181
Deville on contraction of granite, 286
Disco Island, 236
Dogs, bones of, in shell mounds, 15
of bronze age, 25
D'Orbigny, Alcide, controverts exis
tence of recent species of miocene
shells, 430
Dover, Straits of, 284, 367
Dowler, Dr., 43, 200
Drew, Mr. F., cited, 278
Drift and boulders in Ireland, 272
contorted in Denmark, 342
in Perthshire, 244
Drumkellin bog, 30
Dryden on man, quoted, 193
Dryopithecus of Lartet,
Dumontd'Urville,Papoo dwellings, 19
Dundonald, cannel coal ornament at,
55
Diirnten, near Zurich, lignite of, 314
Dussel river, 75
T7ARTHQUAKE of 1855 in New
i-J Zealand, 349
New Madrid, 202
Egypt, borings in Nile valley, 33, 38
date of buildings in, 380
Sir G. C. Lewis on, 381
Egyptian early civilisation, 380
Egyptologists, 38
Elephants' fossil teeth, 133
Elephas antiquus (fig. 19), 133, 143
meridionalis (fig. 20), 133
primigenius (fig. 18), 133
Torquay, 371
Elevation of land, in Sardinia, 177
in valley of Mississippi, 205
Eliot, Father, translation of Bible,
467
Embryological development, 415
Engihoul cavern, 65
512
INDEX.
ENG
Engis cave skull, 79, and (fig. 2) 81
cavern, 65
England, glacial formations in, 269
Engulfed rivers near Liege, 72
Eocene monkey of lliitimeyer, 500
supposed monkey of Kyson, a
pachyderm, 500
Equine fossil species in America, 439
Erosion, glacial, of lakes, 309
Erosive action of glaciers, 315
Erratic blocks, map of, 357
distribution and size of, 362
in Massachusetts, 355
England, 280
Erratics in Ireland, 272
Sussex, 281
Sweden, 239
Escher von der Linth on Alpine
erratics, 303
Etheridge, Mr., cited, 278
Europe, map of N.W., upheaved 600
feet, 279
Evans, Mr. John, 162, 187
on archseopteryx, 453
on flint implements, 117
Extinct glaciers of Switzerland, 290
Extinction of species, 374, 393
FAJOLES, hill of, 182
Ealconer, Dr.. on British species
of fossil rhinoceros, 173
cited, 134, 135, 143, 174, 179,
199, 216
on Brixham cave, 98
elephants, 436
plagiaulax, 400
Falunian strata, 430
Farquharson of Haughton, 113
Fife, raised beach in, 54
Finmark, unequal movement in, 348
Flint implements, 66, 127, 160-163
- figures of, 114, 115, 118
at Icklingham, 169
Hoxne, Suffolk, 166
from St. Acheul, 114
in ancient gravel, 141
basin of Seine, 1 50
. Somme valley, 112
of Ouse valley, 163
knives in Aurignac cave, 188
GER
Flint knives in Brixham cave, 102
valley of Somme, 117
tools near Bedford, 165
Florida coral reefs, 44
Flower, Mr., on quadrumana, 488
Fluviatile deposits of Thames valley,
159
Fluvio-marine formation at Shoe-
bury ness, 129
Foldings of strata in Island of Moen,
342
Fond du Foret, 70
Foraminifera, 442
Forbes, Edward, cited, 283
Fauna and Flora of British
Isles, cited, 6, 146, 211, 274,
283
on zero of animal life in Egean,
268
Forest bed of Norfolk cliffs, 215
Forfarshire zone of boulder clay, 249
Fossil man of Denise, 194
Fossiliferous strata, tabular view of,
7
Fox, used for food, 24
France, Central, volcanic action in,
198
Frere, Mr., on flint implements, 104,
166
Fuhlrott, Dr., 76
p ALLO-ROMAN antiquities, 152
vl coffins, 134
remains, 110
Gangetic mud, 336
Gamier, M., of Amiens, 134, 143, 145
Gastaldi, Signer, 305
Gaudry, M., 104
Gaulish monuments, 61
Geikie, Mr., cited, 278
on buried canoes, 49
upheaval of Scotland, 50
Generations, alternate, 421
Geneva, Lake of, filled with ice, 299
Geographical changes in post-pliocene
period, 273, 284, 375
Geological record, imperfection of,
448
German language in Pennsylvania,
466
INDEX.
SI 3
GIL
Gillieron, Victor, 28
Giraffe, 410
Girard on Egypt, 37
Glacial changes in Scotland, 248
, time required for, 284
deposits of Norfolk cliffs, 218
succession of, 322
in Ireland, 270
drift near Ivrea, 308
deposits in England, 269
period, 229, 435
a'ge of, 206
in North America, 351
- Scotland, 241
furrows, 293
Glacial erosion, 309
Glaciers, 291, 293, 294, 296, 301,
315
, extinct in Wales, 265
Glaciers extinct of Alps, intense ac
tion of, 304, and (fig. 42) 299
Morlot on, 301
Glen Roy, Agassizon, 256
Glen Roy, map of (fig. 36), 254, 252,
and see Parallel roads
Goffontaine, G9
Gorilla, foot of, 477
Huxley on, 490
Owen on, 490
Gosse, II. T., flint tools found by,
151
Gower caves, 1 72
Gratiolet on brain, 482
Gravels, upper and lower, 130
Gray, Dr. Asa, on law of continuity,
501
natural selection and
natural theology, 502, 505
Gray's Thurrock, 157
Greeks and Romans on early state of
man, 379
Greenland, continental ice of, 235
Griffiths, Sir R., on Irish drift, 272
Grotto di Maccagnone, 175
Ground-ice, 139
Guildford flint implements, 161
Gulf stream affects climate, 364
Gunri, Rev. J., on Mundesley strata,
168, 216, 224
Guyot on glaciers, 297
HOR
HAARLEM, lake of, 157
Hall, James, on trains of erratics
in United States, 355
Hallam on Man's place in creation,
500
Hallstadt triassic beds, 449
Hanno, 384
Happisburgh buried forest, 214
Harrison, General, on Ohio mounds,
41
Hay den, Mr., on fossil mammalia of
Niobrara, 438
Hearne on American Indians, 140
Hebert, M., 104, 151, 196
Heer, Professor, cited, 215, 237
on carbonised wheat, 21
Diirnten fossils, 315
Oeninghen plants, 431
fossil plants of Greenland
and Iceland, 238
and linger on Atlantic continent,
440
Hekekyan Bey, 33
Heliopolis, 4, 388, 333
Herodotus on lake dwellings in Thrace,
17
Herschel, Sir J. F., on physical geo
graphy and polar cold, 367
Hesbayan mud or loess, 329
Hildreth, Dr., 41
Himalayan mud compared to loess,
336
Hippopotamus, climate and habits of,
178
fossil,
His, Professor, 26
Hitchcock, Professor, on glaciers of
Massachusetts, 355
Homer on Thebes, 382
Hooker, Dr. on creation by variation,
134, 157, 142, 157, 172,' 175, 417
glaciers of Lebanon, 323
Himalayan shelves or roads,
261
progression, whether indi
cated by fossil plants, 404
reversion, 420
variation in plants of com
plex organisation, 442
Hopkins on climate, 364
Horace on origin of Man, 379
L L
514
INDEX.
HOR
Homer, Mr., on borings of alluvial
plain of the Nile, 34, 33
Homes en Vienna basin, 430
Hoxne flint implements, 166
section of strata at (fig. 24), 168
Hull, Mr. E., on extinct glaciers in
England, 269
Human bones, 59
' absence of, in alluvium of
Somme, 144
in Liege caverns, 64
fossils at Le Puy, 194
Natchez, 200
remains in loess near Maestricht,
338
Humboldt, Alex., on languages, 461
William, on languages, 468
Humphry, Dr., on characters of Negro,
91
Huxley on brain, 483
gorilla, 490
human skulls of Engis and
Neanderthal, 80
difference between reason and
instinct, 494
term quadrumanous, 476, 478
Hysena spelsea, 171
Hybridisation, 411
TCE-ACTION in Norfolk cliffs, 222
North America, 355
river beds, 139
of extinct glaciers, intensity of,
304
Icebergs, action of, 230, 361
Iceland, Norwegian colony in, 465
Icelandic language, 466
surturbr and, plants of, 238
Icklingham flint implements, 169
Immortality of the soul, 498
Imperfection of geological record,
448
Independent creation, 422
Indians of Massachusetts, extinction
of, 467
Insects, European and American, 434
Ireland, glacial formations in, 270
Irish lake dwellings, 29
Iron, age of, 10
Islands, absence of mammalia in, 443
LAR
Italian extinct glaciers, 305
Ivrea glacial drift, 308
TAMES, Sir H., cited, 271, 278
J Jamieson, T. P., of Ellon, 242
cited, 278
on extinct river chan
nels, 249
on glacial period in
Scotland, 244
on parallel roads 259
Jukes, Prof., survey of Ireland, 272
Junction and separation of England
and Ireland, 282
the Continent,
282
Jura, Alpine blocks on, 294
T7ELLER on lake villages, 19
' V fishing-huts, 19
Kent, flint implements in, 162
Kent's Hole, cave near Torquay, 97
King, Rev. S. W. on Mundesley
section, 168, 224
cited, 214, 215, 217
Kingsley, Rev. C., 156
Kitchen -middens, or refuse heaps, 12,
372
Kjerulf of Christiania on ice-action
in Sweden, 234
T AKE-BASINS, origin of, 309
J-J dwelling, post-glacial in Italy,
319
Swiss, Plate L, frontispiece, 17,
373
of Haarlem, 147
Lamarck's theory, 389
objections to, 392
Lambert, Abbe, on fossil bones of
Oise valley, 153
Lament, Mr., on Spitzbergen, 268
Languages formed slowly, 465
changes of, compared to species,
457
origin and development of, 454
Larcom, Lieut., map of Ireland, 278
Lartet, M., 60, 153, 183, 196
INDEX.
515
LAR
Lartet, M., on Dryopithecus, 499
Lauder, Sir T. Dick, cited, 255
Leech, Mr. T., on flint tools, 162
Leidy, Dr., on fossil mammalia of
United States, 438
Lemming of Norway, 157
Lepsius, cited, 383
Lepus timidus, 23
Le Puy-en-Velay human fossils, 194
Lewis, Sir G. C., 381, 382
Liebig on stalactite, 71
Liege caverns, 63, 70
Life at great depths in ocean, 268
Lignite at Uznach, 315
Linant Bey, 37
Linnaean order, Primates, 474
Living languages, number of, 458
Lochaber parallel roads, 252
Loess at Liege, 74
fossil shells of (figs. 44, 46), 326
geographical distribution of, 328
human remains in, 324
in basin of Danube, 333
Neckar, 332
nature and origin of, 324
near Stuttgart, 331
of Belgium, 329
Odenwald, 330
position of, 334
Lohle, Mr., on piles of lake dwellings,
20
London, flint implements in gravel of,
160
Longevity of species in mammalia,
441
Loven, on arctic character of drift
shells, 57
Lower level gravels of Somme Valley,
108
Lubbock, Mr., on Danish shell mounds,
11
Bubalus moschatus, 156
Swiss lake dwellings, 19
Lund, fossil monkeys found by, in
Brazil, -i98
MACANDEEW, Mr., 146
Maccagnone, Grotto di, 175
M'Enery, Mr., 97
MEN
Maclaren, Mr. C., on Pentland hill
erratics, 247
Swiss erratics, 298
Madeiran Archipelago, 444
Maestricht loess, 338
Malaise, Professor, 69
Malthusian doctrine, 409
Mammalia, absence of, in islands, 443
at Menchecourt, 125
nineteen species of, in
Aurignac cave, 185
Mammalian fauna in Central France,
199
fossil in drift of Somme, 137
of Norfolk cliffs, 216
longevity of species in, 441
recent and fossil, 436
remains in Liege caverns, 64
scarcity of, in Irish drift, 271
Mammals of Amoorland, 158
Man, extermination of species by, 374
foot of, 476
migrations of, 376
Man's age in relation to present fauna,
289
Map by de Mortillet of moraines
(fig. 43), 306
of British isles in glacial period
(fig. 39), 276, (fig. 40) 278
erratic blocks in U. S., 357
Europe upheaved 600 feet (fig.
41), 279
parallel roads, Glen Eoy (fig.
36), 254
Marcel de Serres, 60
Marcon, Mr., cited, 315
Marietta, mounds at, 41
Marmora, Count Albert de la, 177
Marshall, Mr. on chimpanzee, 488
Massachusetts erratic blocks, 355,359
Mastodon, genus, 353, 436
arvernensis, 226
giganteus, 351, 353
Mautort, flints at, near Abbeville, 125
Megaceros Hibernicus, 185, 273, 283
Meigs, Dr,, 42
Meilen, lake of Zurich, 18, 26
Memphis, 34, 381
antiquity of, 382
Menchecourt, near Abbeville, 121
mammalia, 125
516
INDEX
MEN
Menchecourt, fossil shells at, 123^
section at, 122
Menzaleh, lake, 35
Meridional zones of cold, 366
Migrations of man, 376
Miller, Hugh, on progression, 396
Milne, Mr., cited, 129
Miocene flora of Iceland, 238
plants and insects, 432
Missing links between man and
animals, 502
Mississippi Delta, 42
section of valley of (fig. 26), 200
Moel Tryfane, 267
Moen, Island of, 342
Moens klint (figs. 47 and 48), 344
Molluscs, longevity of species in, 442
Moore, Mr. C., 401
Moosseedorf, lake of, 20
Moraines, of modern glaciers, 293
in Scotland, 248 .
Merges, bronze period, 21
Morlot on Swiss glaciers, 301, 220
. geological archaeology, 110
delta of Tiniere, 27
Mortillet, Gabriel de, on lake basins
310
map of moraines by, 306
Morvan, granite boulders from, 151
Moulin Quignon, 130
Mounds in valley of Ohio, 39, 41
of Santos, 41
Mud produced by glaciers, 325
Mudge, Captain, 31
Miiller, Max, on languages, 454
Mundesley and Hoxne deposits
compared, 2 '2 7
fresh water formation, 223
section (fig. 33), 224
Murchison, Sir B,. L, on Alpine
glaciers, 296
Muswell Hill, 160
Mutability in vegetable kingdom, 418
Mytilus edulis, 13
fossil, 178, 240
1CTATCHEZ, age of deposit, 203
li fossil man, 205
human fossil at, 200
shells, 201
OWE
Natural selection, 407, 413
and variation, 469
Neanderthal cave, section of (fig. 1), 76
skeleton. 76, 375
skull, 78 and (fig. 3) 82, and (fig. 4)
83
Nebraska valley, 439
Negro, anatomical character of, 91
pictures of in Egyptian temples, 385
race unchanged in Virginia, 386
Neozoic strata, 7
Newbold, Captain, 36
New Madrid, earthquake of, 202
New Zealand, earthquakes in, 349
Nile delta, 33
mud, 325
river, 36
Niobrara valley, 438
Noeggerath, Professor, of Bonn, 128
Nomenclature of Tertiaries, 3
Norfolk cliffs, section of (fig. 27), 213
North America, glacial period in, 351
deposits in, 354
Cape, rising, 58
Norway, raised beaches, 57
Norwegian colony in Iceland, 465
Norwich Crag, 208
OAK, in Danish peat, 9
Ocean, life in at great depths, 268
Oeninghen beds, 431
Ohio, ancient mounds of valley of, 39
valley of, 39
Oise, valley of, 153
Orbitolina concava, 119
Organic remains, in Scotch boulder
clay, 250
variety of in glacial formations,
267
Origin of species by variation and
natural selection, 407
and development of languages, 454
Oscillations of Alpine glaciers, 292
of level, 285, 287, 333
Ossiferous caves in Sicily, 1 74
Ouse, valley, section of, 164
flint implements, 163
Owen, Professor, on human brain, 480
supposed eocene monkey of
Kyson, 500
INDEX.
517
OWE
Owen,Professor, on archseopteryx, 451
brain of marmoset, 483
gorilla, 490
progression, 397
PALUDINA marginata, 225
JL Parallel roads, Darwin on, 257
view of, Plate II., p. 252
of Glen Roy, 252
Chambers on, 258
Jamieson on, 259
Pajonian lake dwellings, 17
Pagham erratics near Chichester, 280,
Pascal's Thoughts, 500
Paviland skeleton, 98
Peat, Danish, 8
antiquity of, 110
of Somme valley, 106, 108
rate of growth of, 111
Pengelly, Mr., 98
Penguin, in shell-mounds, 15
Pennsylvania, 466
Pertuan, skulls, 56
Perthshire, drift in, 244
Pertz, Chevalier, 459
Peru, raised beach, 46
Phillips, Professor, on erratics of
Yorkshire, 270
Phoca gryppus, 14
Physical geography, revolutions in,
274,375
Pictet, Professor, 195, 90
Pierre a Bot, 295
Pingel, Dr., 237
Plagiaulax, 400
Plants, fossils of Norfolk cliffs, 216
Pleistocene, term explained, 6
Pliocene, older and newer, terms de
fined, 6
Pont de Thiele, 29
Post-glacial dislocations, 341
lake dwelling in Italy, 319
Post-pliocene period, 59
alluvium, with flint implements, 93
of Somme Valley, 106
burying-place at Aurignac,
181
term defined, 5
tertiary, term defined, 5
Pottery, post-pliocene, in Sardinia,
178
REI
Pouchet, George M., 104
Pourtalis, M., 44
Pozzuoli, 45
Prestwich, Mr., on Chillesford glacial
beds, 211
his visit to St. Acheul, 103
discovery of Cyrena at
Abbeville, 123
on contorted strata at St.
Acheul, 138
cited, 161, 162, 168, 169, 225,
267,270,376 .
on ground ice, 139
ice T holes at St. Acheul, 116
Precy near Criel, 153
Primordial types, 470
Primates, Linnean order of, 474
Proboscidians, 436
Progression, theory of, 395, 472
whether botanically true, 405
Puggaard, rise of land in Denmark,
12
Puggaard's sections, 344
Purbeck, oolite fossil mammalia of,
400
AUADRUMANOUS, term, 475
^l why term deceptive, 476
Quadrumana, Mr. W. H. Flower on,
488
Quatrefages on unity of species,
495
Quedlinburg, 157
Quenstedt, Professor, on Bubalus
moschatus, 186
RACE and species, 389
Races change more slowly than
languages, 457
Raised beach in Peru, 46
Rameses, statue of, 38
Ramsay, Professor, on flint tools, 117
cited, 285
on glaciers of North Wales,
266
lake basins, 311
Ravin, M., 126
Recent deposits of seas and lakes, 44
geological term, defined, 5
Reindeer in Brixham cave, 99
518
INDEX.
REI
Reindeer, 1000 antlers of, in one
fissure, 172
fossil in South of France, 190
Reptilia, retrograde movement of, 402
Reversion to original type, 420
Rhine, bed of, at Bingen, 128
- glacial drift of, 303
Rhinoceros hemitoecus, 173
tichorhinus, 156, 186
eaten by man, 186
Rhone, extinct glacier, 299
glacial drift of, 303
Richardson, Sir John, on Arctic fossil
plants, 238
Rigollot, Dr., 95
Rink, Dr. H., on Greenland ice, 235
Rise of land in Sardinia, 177
Robert, M., on Denise fossil man, 198
Roches Moutonnees (fig. 38), 269
Rolleston, Professor,, on brain, 488,
489, 492
Roman pottery, 110
Rosiere, 38
Rubus genus, 425
Riitimeyer, on Bos primigenius, 370
Eocene monkey, 500
vertebrata of lake dwellings,
22
s
T. ACHEUL, 96
contorted strata (fig. 21 a),
138
section of gravel (fig. 21), 135
St. Cassian beds, 449
St. George's Channel, 283
St. Hadelin, 72
St. Hilaire, Isidore G., on Bimana, 475
San Giro, 1 75
Sandstone blocks in gravel of Somme,
136
Santos mounds, 41
Sardinia, r*e of land in, 177
Saxe Weimar, Prince Bernhard of,
466
Scandinavia, a centre of erratics, 232
once covered with ice, 232
Scarcity of human bones, 148
Schaaffhausen, Professor, 78
Schiller's Indian funeral dirge, 189
Schlegel, Professor, on elephant, 438
Schmerling, Dr., cited, 63, 145
SPI
Schmerling, Dr., on antiquity of man,
68
Schrenck, Dr. von, 158
Schroeder van der Kolk, 481, 486
Scotch fir in Danish peat, 9
Cromer forest bed, 215
lignite of Utznacb, 315
boulder clay, organic remains in,
250
Scotland, glacial period in, 241
re-elevation of, 246
submergence of, 243
upheaval in, 47
Scrope, Mr. Poulett, 192, 195
Sedgwick, Professor, on progression,
395
Section at Hoxne, 168
of Aurignac cave (fig. 25), 182
cliffs at Cromer, 213
Neanderthal cave (fig. 1), 76
Ouse valley (fig. 24), 164
Somme valley, 106 (fig. 16),
121
Sefstrom on alternate generation, 421
Seine, basin of, 150
Sepulchral grotto at Aurignac, 182
Sequoia, in Disco Island, 237
Serapis, temple of, 45
Shell-mounds, Danish, 11
Shoeburyness fluvio-marine formation,
129
Sicily, cold period in, 323
Sicilian ossiferous caves, 174
Silver pits off the Humber, 277
Skull in Engis cave 79, and (fig. 2) 81
of Borreby (fig. 5), 80
Neanderthal (fig. 3), 82,
(fig. 4), 83
Skulls at Carnon, 56
at Pertuan, 56
of stone period, 15
Smith, Dr. Andrew, 179
J., of Jordanhill, 55
Solenhofen, fossil bird found in stone
of, 451
Somme valley, 93, 106
flint tools of, 112
section of, 122
Species, extinction of, 393
and race, 389
Spirifer trigonalis, 427
INDEX.
519
SPO
Sponges from St. Acheul, 119
Spontaneous generation, 391
Spratt, Cuptain, on cave in Malta, 438
on change of level in Crete, 178
Spring, Dr., 80
Squier and Davis, 39
Stalactite, Liebig on, 71
Stalactites in caves, 71
Staring's geological map of Holland,
147
Steenstrup on age of peat, 17
fossils in peat, 9
Icelandic fossil plants, 238
Stereognathus ooliticus, 401
Stockaded islands in Ireland, 30
Stone, age of, 10
and bronze, ages of, 369
Stonesfield oolite, fossil mammalia
of, 401
Strathmore, 246
Stuttgart, fossil mammifer of trias
at, 401
Striated glacial pebbles and blocks, 304
Submergence of land, 376, 378
in glacial period, 276, 278,
285
North Wales, 267
Scotland, 243
Wales, 285
Subsidence of British Isles, 278
land, 288
Successive changes, time required for,
284
Suffolk tertiaries or crags, 208
Sum tier's, Records of Creation, 481,
496
Sunderbunds, 374
Superficial traces of glaciers and ice
bergs, 230
Sussex erratics, 281
Sus scrofa palustris, 25
Swedish raised beaches, 57
Swiss extinct glaciers, 290
lake dwellings, 17, 373
Systems of classification, 473
Syria, cold period in, 323
rpABULAR view of strata, 7
-L Taxodium distichum, 43
Tay, estuary of, 54
VAR
Tertiary strata, classification of, 3
Thames alluvium, 154
valley, fluviatile deposits of, 159
Thebes, 381
antiquity of, 382
Theory of progression, 395, 397, 398,
404
objections to, 404, 472
Thothmes, Egyptian King, 37
Tiedemann on negro's brain, 481
brain of ape, 489
Till in Norfolk, 219
Time required for changes of glacial
period, 284
Tiniere, cone of, 321
Tiuiere, Morlot on, 27
Torquay, caves near, 96
Torquay, elephas primigenius at, 371
Tournal, M., 59
Transmutation theory, 424, 471
arguments for and against, 446
Trias of Austrian Alps, 449
Stuttgart, 401
Trimmer on Moel Tryfane, 267
Trimmer's maps of glacial period,
273, 162
Troyon on lake habitations, 20
TT DDE VALLA, 57
U Unger on Atlantic continent, 440
miocene plants, 432
Unio littoralis (fig. 22), 158
Unity of origin of man, 387
races, 386
species, Quatrefages on, 495
Upheaval and subsidence, causes of,
288
in Scotland, 47
Wales, 282
of land at North Cape, 58
rate of. 58, 178
Upsala erratics, 240
Ursus arctos, 22, 109
- spelffius, 101
Utznach near Zurich, lignite of, 314
TTANESSA atalanta, 434
V Variation, 407, 414
520
INDEX.
VAR
Varieties, incipient species, 416
Variation and natural selection, 469
wide range of, 429
Vedas, 46
Vegetable kingdom, mutability in, 41 8
Vegetation, changes of, in, human
period, 16, 372
Venetz on Alpine glaciers, 291
Vertebrata in Danish mounds, 14
in lake dwellings, 23
unknown in oldest rocks, 403
Vestiges of creation, 407
Vibraye, Marquis de, 151
Volcanic action in Central France,
198
Vrolik, on anatomy of quadrumana,
481, 486
TTfALES, extinct glaciers in, 265
Vf submergence of, 285
upheaval in, 282
Wall of Antonine. 51
Wallace, Mr. Alfred, 408,419
on transmutation, 411
Wallich, Dr., on alluvium of Ganges,
337
starfish at great depth, 268
Wangen, Lake of Constance, 20
Welsh glacial drift, 366
Wexford drift, 271
ZTJR
Whale at Dunmore, 53
fossil, Airthrie, 53
Whales at Bacton, 217
Whitaker, Mr. W., cited, 278
Wicklow mountain, drifts of, 271
Williamson, Mr., on Wokey hole, 171
Wilkinson, Sir Gardner, 35
Wokey Hole, 1 70
Wollaston, T. V, on insects, 435
Wood, Lieut.- Col., 172
Mr. Searles, his monograph of
crag shells, 209
Woodward, Mr. S. P., on crag fossils,
209
Words, new ones introduced, 462
Works of art in post-pliocene allu
vium, 150
Wyatt, Mr. Digby, on Irish lake
dwellings, 30
Mr. James, on flint tools near
Bedford, 163
Wylie on lake habitations, 1 8
L7VERDUN, 28
r7OSTERA marina in mounds, 16
J Zurich, lake of, 314
pile dwellings in, 18
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